The Simple Life – Day Two
Posted: 05/02/2012 Filed under: Gaming, Words Leave a comment »Judging by the disaster of yesterday morning I decided to spend yesterday afternoon joining a local farmer and his friends in their day-to-day and hope to pick up some pointers. I’m not sure what part of the world he’s from but he’s definitely not English. However, his co-workers keep calling him Eric so I greet him by that name, introduce myself, explained the situation and he offered to give me some experience watering his crop and watching him do the rest.
Eric wasted no time bossing us about, telling us what seed goes where and how they should be harvested while doing relatively little himself. I know he owns the land, but Jesus… what a control freak! After I hastily watered and fertilised a small line through his soil I make a comment that he was just exploiting us for free labour which was met with an unfriendly response and something like “Wir versuchen, diese Ficker helfen, und das ist, was wir bekommen? Ich sollte eine Mistgabel in seinem hinteren Ende zu setzen!” – which I can only assume is Euro-farmer speak for “He knows the truth, so let us tell the barman when he uses Google on his phone under the table at the next pub quiz!”
Eric and his pals seemed keen to show me their tool shed but I forcefully declined and quickly return to my own farm ready to start fresh the next day with some idea of how to operate a tractor without killing pedestrians.
This morning I fitted my tractor with a cultivator and headed straight to my field. Unfortunately I left the lock off and didn’t realised I’d ploughed up 300 metres of tarmac outside my own home until I hit a sewer cover.
I ploughed my fields like a pro before it dawned on me that it would take quite some time to finish. A local boy was watching and laughing as I failed to three-point-turn at the edges – accidentally jamming myself against a bridge once or twice…
Frustrated, I told him I’d give him $10 if he could do a better job. The little prick ruined my day with his perpendicular lines and right-angled cuts. I paid up, reluctantly.
My Attempt
His Attempt
I gave him a handful of extra cash and the keys to the tractor and told him to finish the job while I walked back to the farm and tried to figure out what the next step should be.
I found a spare tractor tucked away that seemed to run nicely so I took a quick tour of the rest of my farm, since I hadn’t actually surveyed the place before handing over the money to the crying guy in the blood-stained overalls. There seemed to be some sort of tourist attraction around the mountain which cut through the picturesque landscape. As I got closer I saw it offered free chairlift rides to the top, so obviously I took a ride up to survey my lands from the sky. I could see my farm, the connecting roads around the mountain and what looked like docks. There also seemed to be an old building which looked like a old-style bewery not far down the lane. Maybe they can cut me a deal on anything that I manage to grow on my dirt patches?
Not far down the pathway towards the brewery I came across several fields what must have been seeded by the previous owner as they were shoulder-high with crops ready for harvest! Without a second thought I hopped in the combine harvester sheltered nearby and began threshing the crop with the spinning blades in a concise and thought-out pattern.
I called the boy over to make him finish the job while I went to investigate what crop we have on our hands. He insisted it’s barley, but who’d ever trust someone 4 months younger than me on the subject? I told him it’s probably just some genetically modified ricicle starch and pocketed a strand to take to the brewery. I climbed back in the tractor and continued down the B-road.
The brewery confirmed that the crop was barley and they’d pay me good money or it as it saves them shipping it in from Nowheresville (which I assumed was somewhere near Denmark, based on the Scandinavian name) and it allows the brewery to continue selling their beer as “Sourced from Local Ingredients!” without actually lying for once. The head of the brewery told me that I can reach my farm much quicker by continuing down the road. I got back, attached a trailer to my tractor and decided to sneak back up on the boy, ready to receive the first fruits of our labour.
After emptying the harvester’s contents into the trailer I sped back to the brewery, narrowly avoiding another crash. The brewer handed me a cheque for $12,000 as a “taster” of things to come if I kept bringing him barley in this quantity.
I told the boy to continue harvesting but by the time I’d had a pint or three at the brewery he’d buggered off home for his tea, leaving the job half done. I quickly emptied what he had done in my absence and took it back to the brewery for another lump of cash before weaving my tractor back to the farm.
Once there, I had trouble getting into my own house as the wife was obviously out or in bed and I hadn’t the foggiest where I left my keys so I spent a few hours trying to figure out what the last few attachments I had left in the yard were for and if I had anything to bale hay with. I eventually figured out that one was a plough (which made me feel an idiot for trying to prepare a field for seeding without knowing what a plough was) but the rest I left to rust in the yard while I stumbled into town to see what the night-life was like in the small village.
Simon - Cow Owner
I met a young man in town called Simon. Lovely lad, and after a few pints of Guiness he’d sold me a cow called Brenda. I asked him where Brenda was at that moment. He must’ve thought I was asking out of curiosity, as he seemed shocked when I told him I was going to get my tractor and a torch and was going to collect Brenda immediately. He shouted something like “… 9 pints… paperwork… arrested…” but I was already out the door.
After 7 hours of stumbling around in the darkness of the unfamiliar hills near where Simon had described, I found the cow I assumed to be Brenda and proceeded to mount her and try to ride her home. Brenda was clearly against this idea, as I awoke 2 hours later with bruised ribs and the sun burning my eyes.
Simon finally found me and told me that not only was that cow not Brenda but that I had wandered into a farm that technically belonged to a neighbouring country. He drove me back to my tractor and trailer and assured me that Brenda would be delivered to the empty pens on my farm by the end of the day.
Driving home I fell asleep at the wheel, which resulted in me running over a scarecrow. I wasn’t sure if it was mine, so I quickly drove off. I later got bollocked by my wife for not coming home for 26 hours.
The Simple Life – Day One
Posted: 05/02/2012 Filed under: Gaming, Words Leave a comment »Fed up of my day-to-day life in the rat race, I decide to take the plunge and traded it all away for a simpler life in the country, growing my own food, tending to a flock of animals and spending my days in the fresh, clean outdoors. I woke up at 6:55am on my first day and stepped outside to survey my lot. Not a lot of to work with, but the run-down tractor and harvester suggest I should get to work on mowing, ploughing and seeding a field if I have any hopes of surviving.
A Dream Come True
I get in my tractor, turn the key and hit the pedal. It’s at this moment that I remember I never learned how to operate a tractor and end up zig-zagging onto the nearby B-road and smashing front-first into an oncoming people-carrier, sending my tractor into a standing position on its rear wheels and leaving no sign of life coming from the other vehicle. In a panic, and with growing awareness that other motorists were witness to this, I quickly tried to mount the tractor and find a reverse gear but all I managed was burning rubber and a spluttering engine. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I sold my 3-bedroom house in the sub-urbs and dragged my wife and kids away from friends and family to live off the land…
7:34am and I’m trying to calm down the queue of faceless commuters I’m slowing down with my catastrophe. I try to ensure the passengers of the people-carrier are okay, but I’m getting no response. A boat even pulls up, with it’s occupants giving me a glare that says “What the fuck were you thinking?!”.
In my desperation, despair, guilt and shame I run back into the farm and come back with my combine harvester. Forsaking any attachments, I charge full-throttle into the back of my tractor in an attempt to dislodge it and get the traffic moving again however this just spins the mangled steel 90-degrees in the wrong direction with the people-carrier now on it’s side, the tractor mounting it disgracefully and my combine harvester now lodged in place in the opposite lane – slowing double the traffic.
Oh God, oh God, oh God...
8:45am. I’m hiding from the locals in the barn. I won’t come out until dark.
