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Local farmer milks cows, tells jokes, writes
book
BY KATHRYN CECERI
Correspondent
SARATOGA -- It's hard enough to run a small family farm nowadays.
Imagine being a farmer with a story deadline to meet.
For more than 10 years, town of Saratoga dairy farmer Joe Peck has
gotten the cows milked on time and written a column for publications
such as American Agriculturalist magazine, which goes out to 35,000
farmers monthly.
Now Peck has gathered some of his favorite columns in a book,
"A Cow in the Pool & Udder Humorous Farm Stories." The
self-published volume, nicely produced and complete with drawings
and caricatures by Andrew R. Taormina, has been selling briskly at
libraries, feed stores and some of the numerous speaking engagements
which Peck, a member of the National Speakers Association and
Toastmasters, enlivens annually.
On Saturday, family, friends and admiring readers gathered for a
book signing at Peckhaven Farm, a 100-Holstein dairy of distinction
that Peck runs with his son David, situated on a rise with dazzling
views of Vermont, halfway between Saratoga Springs and
Schuylerville.
As visitors toured the restored 19th-century farmhouse that has been
in the Peck family for more than a century and sampled a spread
featuring Cabot cheese, made by the dairy cooperative that uses the
Pecks' milk, the farmer and man of letters noted that it's the
pressure of that monthly magazine that helps turn an otherwise
annoying occurrence at the farm into fodder for his column.
When that heifer stepped onto the snow-covered pool cover and
dropped into the frigid water below, it was a problem that had to be
solved, quick. But it didn't take long to turn it into an anecdote.
"Because you have that deadline, you're always looking for
something," he said.
Some of his favorite columns, and some of the hardest to write, are
in the form of lists. For instance, "You Might Be a Farmer
If" includes such telltale signs as "you can deliver a
calf, dehorn a cow, lance an abscess, and still have appetite enough
to go to the all-you-can-eat spaghetti dinner at school that
night." Or as he tells us, "Real Farmers -- never stack
their firewood higher than their wife can reach."
A lot of Peck's humor comes from being a farmer in an area where
shoveling manure is not an activity shared by most of his neighbors
(unless they're mucking out a horse barn, which for some reason is
considered a much more high-class activity).
He writes about having to make small talk with a bunch of yuppies
decrying the evils of animal fat while munching on cheese and
crackers and coming up with a sudden bit of inspiration when they
unexpectedly ask, "And what do you do for a living?"
("An animal trainer" was the answer he came up with.)
Or how convenient it is to be able to "wear your barn clothes
to the supermarket just so everyone will let you through the
checkout line first."
Peck's book was a family affair. Wife Pat, a retired nutrition
educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Saratoga Country, did
the word processing. Daughter Sharon, a professor of reading at SUNY
Geneseo, helped choose and organize the stories.
"It was so much fun to put into chapters," Sharon Peck
said, even with the constant interruptions from the author.
"Dad would hear us laughing and poke his head out and ask
'Which one you reading?'"
Sean Kelleher, the husband of Peck's other daughter and fellow
Toastmaster Debbie Peck Kelleher, designed and maintains his Web
site, www.joepeckonline.com.
At the reading, a friend and retired dairy farmer from Easton, Ray
Johnson, observed that Peck's "very visual" stories help
the non-farmer understand a little about farm life.
"Joe has the talent to put it in a humorous context," he
added.
Sharon Peck also noted how she enjoyed learning more about what her
father's life on the farm was like when he was a boy. Whenever he
had a question, she said, her father's father told him "Use
your own judgment."
"And he always said they same to us," she said.
"A Cow in the Pool and Udder Humorous Farm Stories" by Joe
Peck is available at Borders in Saratoga Springs, Old Saratoga Books
in Schuylerville, on Peck's Web site www.joepeckonline.com
or by calling him at Peckhaven Farm at 584-4129. Upcoming book
signings include Walkers Feed Store in Fort Ann on Dec. 1 from 11
a.m. to 2 p.m. and Easton Library on Dec. 8 from 2 to 4 p.m.
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