[ EPU Foyer ] [ Lab and Grill ] [ Bonus Theater!! ] [ Rhetorical Questions ] [ CSRANTronix ] [ GNDN ] [ Subterranean Vault ] [ Discussion Forum ]

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

Subject: "Farming Simulator 17"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
Printer-friendly copy    
Conferences Games Topic #89
Reading Topic #89
Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
18463 posts
Feb-04-17, 03:23 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Gryphon Click to send private message to Gryphon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
"Farming Simulator 17"
 
   Turns out agriculture is strangely meditative when a) there is no physical labor and b) you can't smell anything involved.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
  RE: Farming Simulator 17 MoonEyes Feb-04-17 1
     Elder Days Story Time: Farming Gryphonadmin Feb-04-17 2
         RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming Hotaru Lind Feb-05-17 3
         RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming MoonEyes Feb-05-17 4
             RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming Nathan Feb-05-17 5
                 RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming MoonEyes Feb-06-17 15
             RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming ebony14 Feb-06-17 13
             RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming Peter Eng Feb-07-17 18
                 RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming MoonEyes Feb-08-17 19
                 RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming Gryphonadmin Feb-08-17 20
         RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming Proginoskes Feb-05-17 6
             RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming Gryphonadmin Feb-05-17 7
         RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming Bad Moon Feb-05-17 8
  RE: Farming Simulator 17 MoonEyes Feb-05-17 9
     RE: Farming Simulator 17 Gryphonadmin Feb-05-17 10
         RE: Farming Simulator 17 VoidRandom Feb-06-17 11
             RE: Farming Simulator 17 Gryphonadmin Feb-06-17 12
                 RE: Farming Simulator 17 MoonEyes Feb-06-17 14
                 RE: Farming Simulator 17 VoidRandom Feb-07-17 16
                     RE: Farming Simulator 17 MoonEyes Feb-07-17 17

Conferences | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic
MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
530 posts
Feb-04-17, 12:17 PM (EST)
Click to EMail MoonEyes Click to send private message to MoonEyes Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
1. "RE: Farming Simulator 17"
In response to message #0
 
   "Good JESUS crike how can these people live with this!?"
- Billy Connolly, on the smell of farms

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
18463 posts
Feb-04-17, 03:31 PM (EST)
Click to EMail Gryphon Click to send private message to Gryphon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
2. "Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #1
 
   LAST EDITED ON Feb-05-17 AT 02:48 PM (EST)
 
>"Good JESUS crike how can these people live with this!?"
> - Billy Connolly, on the smell of farms

When I was a kid, my parents had a number of horses. In order to obtain the prodigious quantity of hay they required, my father for several summers struck a deal with an acquaintance of his from work who also ran a dairy farm (because one full-time job just isn't enough), whereby we would go for a couple of weeks and help with the haying on his farm in exchange for a cut of the product.

There are a few things about this experience that make it stand out in my mind as a particular zenith of misery in my childhood. One is that haying, by the cruel caprice of the gods, happens at the absolute height of summer, and by definition, must be carried out in open fields on sunny days, when there is exactly no respite at all from the searing gaze of the pitiless daystar. Another is that a bale of hay (as produced by the baling machine Mr. W owned, anyway) weighs about 50 pounds, which is fucking heavy to a fifth-grader. A third is that each day began and ended with the retrieval from, or return to, the main barn of all the necessary equipment. This was, let me just reiterate, primarily a dairy farm.

Horses are not particularly smelly animals. Cows, on the other hand?

(At least it wasn't a pig farm.)

It did have its compensations. For instance, the farm's proprietor had an elderly, half-mad farmhand (he might've been the man's uncle, he was called Uncle Mert but I was never clear on whether it was meant literally) who drove one of the two tractors necessary to make haying a field a halfway efficient operation—one to make windrows, the other to go along the rows and bale the hay. Mert drove the one with the windrower on it, and he was old enough (this was in the early 1980s) that he had been an actual teamster as a young man, so he still had the habit of speaking to the tractor as if it were a team of horses. Before setting off he'd kind of jerk the steering wheel and say "Hup!" and braking was always accompanied by a loud declaration of "Whoooooa." If it got a little bit out of hand he'd be bellowing "Eyyy-up, you sonofawhore!" while managing the situation, which never failed to make my mother fret.

He also had an Australian cattle dog called Tippy who was, in many respects, the most congenial individual on that farm, as long as you didn't mind him trying to herd you everywhere you went.

Still, the entertainment value of Mert and the fraternal socialist comradeship of Tippy did not sufficiently balance the wretchedness of the actual farming. My job—and keep in mind I was in about the, oh, fourth to seventh grades when we were doing this—was to trudge along after the baler and drag the bales into little piles of six or seven each ("consolidate" them, the word my father always used), so that my parents, who were following in our old Dodge pickup with a trailer behind it, would have to stop and collect them less often. This was just as horrible a way to spend an entire week in high summer as you think. Time has not rose-tinted this experience in any way. To this day, whenever my father speaks of "consolidating" anything, I feel a mild but genuine urge to punch him.

Also:

One day my father decided that the pickup and small trailer combination we were using to get our share of the hay home to our horse barn for storage was too inefficient, so he borrowed or rented a much larger trailer, then stacked both it and our pickup to about twice the pickup's usual height with hay bales and hit the Interstate. I have never had a more terrifying ride in a motor vehicle of any type. A short-wheelbase Dodge pickup loaded with something like its own volume of hay, and towing a trailer packed until it was about the size of a motor home, is not the most stable highway platform, especially if you've managed to get the tongue height and the CG on the trailer all wrong, and it really, really doesn't like crosswinds. When Dad and I look back on this incident now, we are not entirely certain why we are still alive. But I suppose I can't blame the farming itself for that, that was simply incompetent transportation of goods. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Hotaru Lind
Member since Apr-3-12
37 posts
Feb-05-17, 03:34 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Hotaru%20Lind Click to send private message to Hotaru%20Lind Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
3. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #2
 
   Also on a really bad day, for example when you have sweat making up about 75% of your clothes hay itches and chafes really badly.
I know this from experience shifting hay as a job one summer hols down here in Australia where it was bloody miserable thanks to the fact that summer it was regularly exceeded 30°C and any wind that was around was like sitting in front of a fan forced oven with the door open.

- - - - - -
Hotaru Lind
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
530 posts
Feb-05-17, 10:14 AM (EST)
Click to EMail MoonEyes Click to send private message to MoonEyes Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
4. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #2
 
   Yeap, misery is the least of it.
Still, as noted, could've been pigs. Or humans. Not that one would keep humans in a farm, note, but human....leavings...stink far more in large amounts than any cow, and I would personally say, pig.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Nathan
Charter Member
1301 posts
Feb-05-17, 11:52 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Nathan Click to send private message to Nathan Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
5. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #4
 
   >Yeap, misery is the least of it.
>Still, as noted, could've been pigs. Or humans. Not that one would
>keep humans in a farm, note, but human....leavings...stink far more in
>large amounts than any cow, and I would personally say, pig.

When I was a kid, my parents did Civil War Reenacting. Because the campaigning season in those days was kind of late-spring-to-mid-fall, that's also when all the battles happened - which means that the reenactments, too, clustered all around High Summer.

This did have its upsides; I only got to enjoy the incomparable experience of snowfall under literal canvas while sleeping on the ground once, because the Cheat Mountain reenactment is the first of the season here in WV, commemorating as it does the utterly wretched experience both Union and Rebel troops had wintering along the crests of opposing ridges right along what is today the border between VA and WV...

Come to think, getting snowed on there is kind of perversely appropriate for Cheat Mountain. Not that that made it any less miserable.

Anyway.

The more typical experience was showing up in a freshly mowed hayfield and pitching canvas tents on wooden poles (both heavy for adults, much less a kid my age at the time) under full summer heat in clothes much less heat-tolerant than we'd consider minimum for such environments today. Food would be cooked on a campfire, 'bed' was a thin air mattress with a sleeping back on top of a layer of rocks, lumps, and ground just sloped enough to slide you out from under the edge of the tent and into the night's rain in your sleep...

...and, what started me on all of this, sanitation consisted of portapots, usually half a dozen or so for one to two hundred reenactors and however many visitors showed up.

In high summer.

...Yeah.

Even today, the memory of That Foul Reek makes me tremble, and anybody insane enough to want to get 'in touch with nature' is welcome to do it without me.

-----
Iä! Iä! Moe fthagn!


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
530 posts
Feb-06-17, 09:38 AM (EST)
Click to EMail MoonEyes Click to send private message to MoonEyes Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
15. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #5
 
   Pretty much exactly that, yeah. Any large collection of human excrement in general, and in summer in particular, is FAR worse than anything produced by animals, even pigs(who has something of a similar omnivorous diet, probably the reason they at least come near).


...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ebony14
Member since Jul-11-11
375 posts
Feb-06-17, 08:49 AM (EST)
Click to EMail ebony14 Click to send private message to ebony14 Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
13. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #4
 
   >Yeap, misery is the least of it.
>Still, as noted, could've been pigs. Or humans. Not that one would
>keep humans in a farm, note, but human....leavings...stink far more in
>large amounts than any cow, and I would personally say, pig.

I would agree. As someone who, through family, school, and circumstance, has been around the leavings of horses, cattle, swine, and humans in somewhat large quantities, I have to say that the latter is by far the most foul. Though, in all honesty, that may be the generally disgusting order of a chemical toilet combined with said leavings, rather than the leavings themselves.


Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Peter Eng
Charter Member
1317 posts
Feb-07-17, 10:15 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Peter%20Eng Click to send private message to Peter%20Eng Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
18. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #4
 
   >Not that one would
>keep humans in a farm...

I'm reminded of a short story about a Gentleman Farmer.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
530 posts
Feb-08-17, 04:31 AM (EST)
Click to EMail MoonEyes Click to send private message to MoonEyes Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
19. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #18
 
   >I'm reminded of a short story about a Gentleman Farmer.

A Modest Proposal?

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
18463 posts
Feb-08-17, 04:38 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Gryphon Click to send private message to Gryphon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
20. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #18
 
   >>Not that one would
>>keep humans in a farm...
>
>I'm reminded of a short story about a Gentleman Farmer.

In their oldest legends, the Skaal people of Solstheim call Hermaeus Mora—old Herma-Mora, the Daedric prince of forbidden knowledge—the Gardener of Men...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Proginoskes
Member since Dec-3-09
122 posts
Feb-05-17, 02:38 PM (EST)
Click to EMail Proginoskes Click to send private message to Proginoskes Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
6. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #2
 
   Wouldn't the mowing have to happen well in advance of the baling anyway? Unless this was silage instead of proper hay, but then the pitiless daystar wouldn't be nearly as critical to the operation.

In my experience, goat faeces doesn't have much smell to it, but the goats themselves tend to more-or-less make up for that "deficit". Billies especially.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
18463 posts
Feb-05-17, 02:46 PM (EST)
Click to EMail Gryphon Click to send private message to Gryphon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
7. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #6
 
   >Wouldn't the mowing have to happen well in advance of the baling
>anyway?

Yeah, now that you mention it, I think my memory elided that bit of the process in its preoccupation with how dreadfully unpleasant it all was.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Bad Moon
Member since Dec-17-02
287 posts
Feb-05-17, 04:35 PM (EST)
Click to EMail Bad%20Moon Click to send private message to Bad%20Moon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list Click to send message via AOL IM  
8. "RE: Elder Days Story Time: Farming"
In response to message #2
 
   Visiting my relatives in Iowa was always hell as a kid as they lived in a area with tons of pig farms. My suburban Pacific NW soul wept.

------
Oh God, it was me. I was the grognard all along.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
530 posts
Feb-05-17, 05:59 PM (EST)
Click to EMail MoonEyes Click to send private message to MoonEyes Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
9. "RE: Farming Simulator 17"
In response to message #0
 
   And this just disintegrated into a sort of "MUCH shit, there I was" upmanship, didn't it?

I apologize profusely.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
18463 posts
Feb-05-17, 06:23 PM (EST)
Click to EMail Gryphon Click to send private message to Gryphon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
10. "RE: Farming Simulator 17"
In response to message #9
 
   >And this just disintegrated into a sort of "MUCH shit, there I was"
>upmanship, didn't it?

I think any discussion of farming is sort of fated to do that. :)

Speaking of, many years ago I lived in the Bay Area in California, and Zoner and I drove down to LA for Anime Expo when it was at the LAX Hilton (so that would've been... 1997, I think). I-5 from northern to southern California (and vice versa) passes through a little slice of hell on Earth called Coalinga, a town so forlorn it doesn't even have a name (COALINGA is what it said on the sign for the railroad refueling stop, as opposed to, e.g., COALINGB or COALINGC). Coalinga's one and, as far as I could tell, only distinguishing feature is that it's the settlement nearest to a colossal complex of cattle feed lots that line the banks of the Interstate. Miles and miles and miles of cows. On a hot day in July, you can smell Coalinga long before you see it, and long after you've passed it by.

People sometimes ask me why I'm an atheist. Occasionally I tell them it's because no god who would allow that to be built right alongside a busy Interstate in a hot, arid region deserves to be believed in.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
VoidRandom
Member since Dec-9-02
132 posts
Feb-06-17, 00:15 AM (EST)
Click to EMail VoidRandom Click to send private message to VoidRandom Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
11. "RE: Farming Simulator 17"
In response to message #10
 
   I see that you missed out on the Harris Ranch Steakhouse in Coalinga then. Almost exactly halfway between LA and SF and the perfect place for a pitstop.

-VR
Fortunately the buildings are fairly airtight
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
18463 posts
Feb-06-17, 00:24 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Gryphon Click to send private message to Gryphon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
12. "RE: Farming Simulator 17"
In response to message #11
 
   >I see that you missed out on the Harris Ranch Steakhouse in Coalinga
>then. Almost exactly halfway between LA and SF and the perfect place
>for a pitstop.

Christ, who can eat in that place? I assumed they all drive to Fresno every day to not starve.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
530 posts
Feb-06-17, 09:36 AM (EST)
Click to EMail MoonEyes Click to send private message to MoonEyes Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
14. "RE: Farming Simulator 17"
In response to message #12
 
   >Christ, who can eat in that place? I assumed they all drive to Fresno
>every day to not starve.

Continuation of the quote above:

"Ten minutes later you go, 'Oh, that smell's away, it must've been a breeze."

Now, 10 minutes is probably very optimistic...I would think a WEEK would be optimistic...but if you LIVE in it, I would think you'd get thoroughly numb. Of course, that would also mean that you wouldn't taste much of what you ate, either, but...

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
VoidRandom
Member since Dec-9-02
132 posts
Feb-07-17, 04:44 AM (EST)
Click to EMail VoidRandom Click to send private message to VoidRandom Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
16. "RE: Farming Simulator 17"
In response to message #12
 
   >Christ, who can eat in that place? I assumed they all drive to Fresno
>every day to not starve.

Nah, you can do wonders with good filters and a positive pressure AC system. It works in tanks to keep out nerve gas. A little cow flop is nothing.
If you can get over the location, the food is excellent, though I doubt they'll ever see a Michelin star.

-VR
Can you imaging the horror of the Michelin reviewers who were assigned that location?
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
530 posts
Feb-07-17, 05:11 AM (EST)
Click to EMail MoonEyes Click to send private message to MoonEyes Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
17. "RE: Farming Simulator 17"
In response to message #16
 
   Just as a general note? Tanks don't have things like doors, and windows, and the need for things like power and phone and other things that leaves the structural integrity less than in one piece. Tanks are generally one solid piece other than the, comparatively small, hatches.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Conferences | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic

[ YUM ] [ BIG ] [ ??!? ] [ RANT ] [ GNDN ] [ STORE ] [ FORUM ] [ VAULT ]

version 3.3 © 2001
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Benjamin D. Hutchins
E P U (Colour)