I could begin by saying I once met a farmer who liked the mud, but that would be a lie.  No farmer likes the mud.  I’m hardly a stranger to telling lies, but some even I dare not utter for fear of the repercussions.

In this case I’d probably lose my farmer card.  The impact on my life would be devastating.  Areas I now enjoy full access to would face restrictions.

Take the farm and home store, for instance.  No longer could I carouse about the whole thing, wandering aisle to aisle.  Instead I would be confined to paints, furnace filters, and anything else I needed to make a mess of my home’s electrical and plumbing systems.

The local elevator, where I pretty much grew up and over who’s counter I was free to speak on anything from politics, to crop prices, seed corn, fertilizer, cattle feed, and local gossip, would now restrict me as well.  I would be left to asking about the best feed for my miniature horses or fainting goats, making asinine inquiries about having anhydrous applied to my lawn, and complaining about how the last batch of dog food gave diarrhea to my Pomeranian.

Finally, at the equipment dealer, I would be relegated only to getting high prices belts for my lawnmower and making statements like, “Boy those new combines sure are something, aren’t they?  How much does one of them suckers cost?”

Other areas, like the local livestock market, would be off limits entirely.

Beyond the day to day impact, I’ve got my future to think about.  I may grow old someday.  If I do, I might want to go into town for a cup of coffee.  Without my farmer card, all I would really be able to talk about would be the weather and the diarrhea of my Pomeranian, I suppose.

I can’t tell you why every farmer hates the mud.  This morning I was reminded of a few reasons why I do, though.  I hate it in the mornings, before I leave the house, when I put clean white socks through yesterday’s coveralls, marking them in a grimy residue not five minutes after having fished them out of a drawer and put them on.

It’s a two-fold bane on socks.  Whenever you come back in, after kicking off boots twenty pounds heavier than they are supposed to be, followed by the coveralls, you re-grime them and dare not wear them into the house.  Cold, damp feet greet a cold garage floor, and you pick up the dirt you were hoping to avoid tracking across the kitchen linoleum.

Generally I refrain from washing coveralls until you wear them into town and someone offers to buy you a cup of coffee at the gas station.  After contemplating if leaving them dirty might not be more profitable, you return home and throw them into a high efficiency washer incapable of handling the mess because it was only designed to clean already clean clothes.

Then you do it all over again.

In the midst of it is the more serious work of trying to keep livestock comfortable and fed.  Sometimes, after hammering a tractor through a foot of slop, when you are out trying to cut the damp wrap off a bale of hay, hoping it at least doesn’t snow on top of the mess, you look down to find the rat terrier house dog belly deep beside you.

It could be worse.  It could be a Pomeranian with diarrhea.

No, I’ve never met a farmer that likes the mud.