Dear county agent guy : calf pulling, husband training, and other dispatches from the heart of the Midwest / Jerry Nelson.

Living the country life, or why "let's get plowed!" doesn't mean the same thing to city folks as it does to farmers. A Norwegian bachelor dairy farmer finds a wife! -- The throwback -- Silo time -- That old house -- The modern marvel -- Adventures in cow herding -- Domestic lessons -- My new address -- Old Frank -- The lady vet -- Don Quixote, tax reformer -- Farm supply stories -- Lutefisk season -- Dear county agent guy -- How to raise farm-fresh kids in twenty-five years or less! Labor and delivery -- Electric fencing 101 -- Christmas shopping with a caveman -- Never sleep with a baby chick -- Surviving parenthood -- The ghosts of horses past -- Deep diaper doo-doo -- Uncle Wilmer -- Husband training made easy -- Monkey business -- I'm gonna marry Mrs. Mortimer! -- Staying married to a dairy farmer -- Hawaii boy -- Never kick a fresh cow pie: lessons learned from a lifetime of dairy farming. A dairy farmer's vacation -- My shameful affair with the farm program -- Out in the trees -- Of silos and learjets -- What's in a cow's name? -- A dog named Sam -- Farm corporate jargon -- A lesson in organic chemistry -- You stinker! -- Experiments in fermentation -- Winter storm stories -- Visiting -- The four seasons of farming.

"In the tradition of Mark Twain and Jean Shepherd, Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor, Jerry Nelson is a humorist whose beat is the American heartland, a small-town world of pickup trucks and Sunday night pancake dinners, dropping in on neighbors and complaining to the country agent. A fourth-generation dairy farmer, Jerry Nelson discovered his voice after he wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter to his county agent for advice on what to do, after a period of heavy rain, about the ducks and Jet Skiers frolicking in his cornfields. From then on Jerry had a new calling to go along with his day job-writing a humorous column called "Dear County Agent Guy." Jerry's depictions of daily life, from the point of view of a taciturn husband with a twinkle in his eye, are read by 250,000 people a week--and occasionally woven into A Prairie Home Companion scripts. These are stories of courtship (Jerry refers to himself as a Norwegian bachelor farmer); childbirth (he offers the delivery room doctor the use of his calf puller); family (he beautifully describes rummaging with his sons through an abandoned family homestead); the duties of a husband (exactly why is it that a man who spends his days in cow manure can't change a baby's diaper?); the days of chores (never will the reader look at a grain silo the same way again). Knee-slappingly funny one moment, poignant the next, it's a very special look at a distinctly American way of life"-- Provided by publisher.