Been busy lately and I forgot to feed the hamster so the ol’ noggin’ isn’t exactly working at peak performance. So I’ll let my brain drift this week and just interject some humor.

Old ranch owner John farmed a small ranch in Montana.  The Montana Wage and Hour Department claimed he was not paying proper wages to his workers and sent an agent out to interview him.

“I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,” demanded the agent.

“Well,” replied old John, “There's my ranch hand who's been with me for three years. I pay him $600 a week plus free room and board. The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her $500 a week plus free room and board. Then there's the half-wit who works about 18 hours every day and does about 90 percent of all the work around here. He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night.”

“That's the guy I want to talk to, the half-wit,” says the agent. “That would be me,” replied old rancher John.

Donkey

Sid was travelling down a country road in his native Yorkshire, England when he saw a crowd of people gathering outside a farmhouse.

It was a cold November afternoon, so he stopped and asked Farmer Ellis why such a large crowd of men was gathered there.

The farmer replied, “Jo's donkey kicked his mother-in-law and she died.” “Well,” replied the man, “She must have had a lot of friends.” “Nope,” said Farmer Ellis. “We all just want to buy his donkey.”

Computer terms in farmer language

Log on: when you want to make the homestead warmer.

Log off: Timberrrrrrrrrrrr.

Mega Hertz: when you not careful getting the firewood.

Lap top: where the cat sleeps.

Hard drive: maneuvering thought those rocky fields on the northern range when there is snow in the ground.

Windows: what to shut when it's cold outside.

Byte: what mosquitoes do.

Modem: what I did to the hay fields.

Keyboard: where the keys hang.

Mouse: critters that eat the grain in the barn.

Not forgetting RAM [Random Access Memory]: when you can't remember anything at all from earlier.

A horse tale

Paul, a jogger, is running down a country road and is startled when a horse yells at him, “Hey-come over here buddy.”

Paul is stunned but still runs over to the fence where the horse is standing and asks, “Were you talking to me?”

The horse replies, “Sure was, man I've got a problem. I won the Kentucky Derby a few years ago and this farmer bought me and now all I do is pull a plough and I'm sick of it. Why don't you run up to the house and offer him $5,000 to buy me. I'll make you some money because I can still run.”

Paul thought to himself, “Wow, a talking horse.” Dollar signs started appearing in his head. So he runs to the house and the old rancher is sitting on the porch.

Paul tells the farmer, “Hey man I'll give you $5,000 for that old broken down nag you've got in the field.”

The farmer replies, “Son you can't believe anything that horse says. He's never even been to Kentucky.”

City slicker

The driver, a young man in a fancy suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the rancher, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The rancher looks at the man, obviously a city slicker, then looks at his peacefully-grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"  The rancher thinks it over, it's a huge herd so he accepts the bet.

The city slicker parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location.  From there he feeds the data to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

Within seconds he receives an email on his Smart phone that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC-connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his phone and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the farmer and says, “You have exactly 1,423 cows.” The rancher is astonished because the city slicker's figure is exactly correct.  He says, “OK, I'm a man of my word, take a cow.”  The investment city slicker selects one of the animals and begins to walk away.

“Wait,” yells the rancher, “Let me have a chance to get even. Double or nothing that I can guess your exact occupation.” The city slicker agrees readily.

“You are a Congressman for the U.S. Government,” says the rancher. “Good grief!” splutters the city slicker, “You are exactly right, tell me, how did you deduce that?”

“Easy,” says the rancher, “Give me back my dog, and I will tell you.”

"No guessing required.” answered the rancher. “You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows.”

Ron Kern is the manager of the Ogle County Farm Bureau.