Top 10 Funniest Things That Ever Happened on My Farm

These are my own tall tales from a lifetime of farming the Arkansas Valley near Pueblo, told the way I tell them at the grange hall after the meeting.

1. The Sheep in the Front Row

   I brought forty sheep to a community meeting by mistake, and they took every good seat in the Pueblo grange hall before the agenda started.

2. The Chile Roast That Stopped Traffic

   One September Saturday the smell of my roasting peppers drew a line of cars a mile long down our county road, and a deputy wanted a pound.

3. The Hen on the Video Call

   My first big video call from the barn went well until a Rhode Island Red walked across the router and joined the committee as a guest expert.

4. The Hail That Became Ice Cream

   One July hailstorm buried my squash patch in white pellets, and the whole neighborhood turned the mess into a block party dessert.

5. The Duck Who Claimed the Ditch

   A white Pekin duck named Alderman took over our irrigation headgate in the Arkansas Valley and began collecting tolls in bread and tortillas.

6. The Scale That Weighed the Dog

   At the Saturday market my squash scale read sixty pounds because my dog Pickles climbed up on the platform for a quiet midmorning nap.

7. The Hired Hand Who Reported to the Rooster

   A college student on his first day at the farm decided the rooster was the foreman and took every single order from him for three days.

8. The Seed Swap and the Squash Named Accident

   I traded seeds at the library swap, spilled the labels, planted every packet in one bed and grew a prize squash nobody could name.

9. The Lambs in the May Snow

   A surprise spring blizzard moved thirty-one newborn lambs into my mudroom, and one of them learned to open the refrigerator by dawn.

10. The Drone and the Borrowed Ewe

    My nephew's new drone landed on a ewe named Beatrice, who carried it across the pasture like a loud little hat with the flock behind her.