Opinion & Comment

No bull: Bumpus family needs lessons on how to live rural

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

Tractor Supply Company has built a 33-state network of retail stores by catering to the needs of people who you wouldn’t necessarily see chewing tobacco and spitting at a farmers’ cooperative while waiting on a truckload of corn seed and fertilizer to be loaded.

This isn’t criticism, not at all. It’s a compliment. Tractor Supply stores in small towns across Appalachia nicely fit a growing niche. Folks with no rural background at all can get merchandise and advice at their local Tractor Supply.

As more and more “city people” move into the country to escape high taxes and traffic congestion, there’s a need for stores where they can buy electric fencing, livestock feed, animal medicines, bolts and hitches, well pumps, rugged clothing, even “how-to” books. The shrinking number of large production farms has pinched the agricultural cooperative system. I know several farmers’ co-ops that have closed their doors in recent years.

The Tractor Supply concept is to offer a wide variety of retail goods to a niche market of farmers, horse owners, ranchers, part-time and hobby farmers, and suburban and rural homeowners, as well as contractors and tradesmen.

I await the decision by Tractor Supply corporate officials to take the next logical step: rural college courses, or lessons on how to live the country life when you don’t know the difference between a steer and a bull.

My new neighbors, a family we named the Bumpuses to protect their real identity, would be candidates for this type of agricultural quick course. I have tried to help them. Lord knows, I have tried.

Mr. Bumpus, an insurance executive, bought 24 acres across the road from my farm. Approximately four acres can be described as “rolling hill.” The remainder of his land would make a billy goat pant trying to get up and down the steep slopes.

He doesn’t live on the property. It is, he says, a weekend hobby farm. Mr. Bumpus arrives on Friday afternoon in his SUV, hitched to a trailer loaded with new equipment and material (purchased at Tractor Supply, of course). He shrugs out of his business suit into stiff blue overalls, exchanges patent leather loafers for new cowboy boots, and dons a John Deere cap with nary a grease spot or dirt stain on it.

He stands, hands on hips, and squints into the sun, as if pondering when to plant the back 40. Although Mr. Bumpus looks the picture of agricultural aptitude, the truth is that he doesn’t know squat.

Take, for instance, his skill in livestock husbandry. Influenced by his wife, a pretty young thing who brightens up the barnyard in her tight jeans and halter top, he came home from the cow sale with a one-eyed heifer and a “steer.” He explained, “My wife felt sorry for the cow. At least, she’s supposed to be pregnant. This will be the start of our herd.”

His wife named the cow “Moonlight,” but I dubbed her “Headlight” because one of her peepers was missing. The steer became “Buddy,” and therein was the problem. Buddy was not a steer. Even someone with no farming experience could see he possessed the standard equipment to be classified as a young bull. I pointed out to Mr. Bumpus that Buddy might need to be confined in more than an electric fence paddock.

He looked at the half-ton animal and chuckled, “Oh, no. Buddy is a steer. It says so on the bill of sale.” Buddy, in response, lowered his wide head and pawed the ground. I could see trouble ahead.

Buddy semi-behaved himself until Headlight proved herself to not be with calf, but wanting to get that way. The Bumpuses arrived for their weekend of fresh air and rural relaxation at the same time that Buddy and Headlight were trading affectionate bellows over the single-strand electric fence.

My wife and I heard screams and cursing, alerting us that something was amiss at the Yuppie farm. Crashes and shattering sounds followed. I trotted over to lend a hand, but changed my mind when I saw Mr. Bumpus running up the steepest hillside with Buddy in hot pursuit.

I’ve never seen a man in cowboy boots move so fast. He leaped into the low branches of a locust tree (another choice an Appalachian farm boy would not have made) and shinnied up, apparently without regard for the stickers. Buddy capered around the base of the tree, kicking up his heels, but responded immediately to Headlight’s sexy come-hither moo from down at the barn.

Mrs. Bumpus, stylishly clad in pastel yellow peddle-pushers with a red flannel shirt knotted at the waist, attempted to separate Buddy and Headlight by swatting them with a broom. Of course, this only enraged Buddy. He chased Mrs. Bumpus to the SUV. She dived in and slammed the door, into which Buddy collided with the racket of an auto wreck. Buddy backed up, lowered his head, and charged into the side of the shiny SUV again. This time, safety glass cracked and blew out.

The vehicle rocked off the ground, and Mrs. Bumpus screamed.

Buddy bellowed; Headlight moo-ed; and Mr. Bumpus, scratched and pierced in the locust tree, cursed.

Well, I could write all day about how the Bumpuses learned a valuable lesson about the rural lifestyle. But, the bottom line is that I am hopeful that Mr. Bumpus will sell me his little slice of country Heaven. I don’t think I will have long to wait. Recent heavy rains flooded the creek, which was dry as a bone when Mr. Bumpus built his new fence across it.

Fence posts, barbed wire, everything washed away… and Buddy is out again.