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The Rural Voice, 1985-09, Page 74Complete Service, Sales and Installation of Westeel grain bins and elevators, M -C and Shivers grain and corn dryers, flex augers, feed equipment roller mills and hog equipment. THIS MONTH'S SPECIAL MODEL 14.6 20 85 bu. grain bins $1525.00 Call Joseph Seili at Huron Feeding Systems Brussels 887-6289 HURON FEEDING SYSTEMS -*************— New MF 775 Swather (weathered), terrific discount. Used Versatile Swather model 400. MF 44 Swather, best offer. BETTER USED COMBINES guaranteed and started in field. — JD 3300 — MF 510 — JD 440 — MF 300 — MF 540 — Also your best offer takes these — Case 400 — MF 300 — MF 35 — MF 510 — IHC 80 — MF 72 — IHC 93. New MF 550 Combine. one only, $12,000 discount. CaII Harold or Don Geo. C. South Equipment Ltd. Meaford, Ont. 1-800-265-3116 no charge in 519 area. Or************i 72 THF RI1R;\I \Yll( I KEITH ROULSTON Talking turkey As more and more people leave the farm and the urban population gets further and further from its rural roots, a Targe portion of our vocabulary stands in danger of disap- pearing or at least becoming irrele- vant. Much of the colour of our language comes from the farm experience. Most of the fairy tales of our childhood involve farm animals, from Henny Penny to the Three Little Pigs. Many of our descriptive expres- sions also come from farming life. "Stop running around like a chicken with its head cut off" you tell somebody who is, well, running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Even an urban person can get some sort of mental image from the idea of an animal without a head, but unless you've actually given a chicken "the axe," you can't get the whole picture of this frantic activity (and you may not want to). There are a few of us, myself in- cluded, unfortunately, who have had the dubious pleasure of actually see- ing a chicken with its head cut off, but how many of us can really ap- preciate the picture of someone being "as mad as a wet hen." Nearly all hens today don't see water anywhere other than in the little waterers they drink from. Even with my little flock of chickens over the years I can't remember seeing a really indignant wet hen. Sticking with fowl sayings for a DNR DRAIN&GI Farm & Municipal Drainage Systems Clay & Plastic Tile Installations All workmanship guaranteed R.R. 4, Stratford 519.271-4777 .t. while, we often use the expression of someone being "chicken," but until you've been around a flock or chickens you don't really understand the description. Chicks are afraid of anything, including their own shadows and the shadow of anything else, probably because of their residual instinct to protect themselves from hawks or other birds of prey. A rustling sound, even the spreading of straw, will drive my little flock of high-strung birds into panic. Very few of us have experienced the stupidity that led to the descrip- tion "turkey" being applied to humans in such an insulting way. The Christmas dinner table is about as close as I've come to a turkey but people have told me they are so stupid they can drown in the rain because they stand looking up with their mouths open. How true this is or how much is exaggeration for effect I may never know. We talk about somebody stubborn being "pig-headed," but how many of us have seen a pig insist on going somewhere you don't want him to go even when you're making it very unpleasant for him to go there. Even among farmers few people know the true stubbornness of a mule anymore. At one time, even urban dwellers had enough experience with horses to appreciate the "horse sense" that familiar beast had. They learned not to "look a gift horse in the mouth," just as farmers did. Today most farmers wouldn't know what they were looking for if they did look in a gift -horse's mouth. From the way we're specializing in everything these days it's obvious that people aren't keeping hens and learn- ing to avoid "putting all their eggs in one basket." Too often instead we're "counting our chickens before they're hatched" and borrowing money to buy against future expectations. But with so few people familiar with farm animals of any sort, we're likely to lose these colourful and very common-sense parts of our language And we'll all likely just "follow likt sheep" while it happens.