Illusions, confusions, delusions, and hallucinations

(note downward spiral implied in title)

It's been a seriously strange couple of weeks here at Falling Downs.

The Farm Manager finds it "unfathomable" that her 89 year old mother has passed.

Just a week ago we were finding it unfathomable that she was still with us.

But there you go. What is fathomable and what is unfathomable depends not on what's actually going on. It depends on perspective.

For my part, travels to and from the Ivey Eye Institute have been facilitated by my dear sister and my 87 year old father. These trips take us through the heart of Letterkenny country. Dad and I stopped off at Timmies in Listowel last night. The place was crawling with uptight young farmers, the kind of guys who drive $90,000 pickup trucks but fret about the price of corn.

And who can blame them for fretting?

Apparently you're no longer allowed to have your own mechanic fix your John Deere tractor anymore. That's the proprietary preserve of Deere's corporate technicians. No wonder those young farmers are fretting. Some of them own two, three, or more half million dollar tractors and they can't keep them running without the blessing of Deere HQ in Moline.

One of the big motivators that keeps young guys in farming, and bear in mind that 100% of the young guys in farming inherited their farms, is the illusion of independence. How independent can you be when the price of your crop is determined by foreign markets and your tractor repairs have to be done by head office?

Nevertheless, a hundred acres of raw land with no buildings, down in Letterkenny country, will set you back over a million bucks. A hundred acres doesn't make a serious farm in this day and age. Folks just plunk down that million to "add to their holdings."

And of course, none of those guys have a million bucks sitting around. All that expansion and consolidation is financed by bank lending. As soon as the banks get nervous, the entire house-o-cards is gonna collapse.

Good luck to those stoic young farmers when that happens. Timmies can only hire so many.

Sometimes we move from confused and deluded right into the realm of hallucination. That's when you're able to convince yourself that all is going according to plan, when, in fact, it's all going to shit.

It's the existential variant of "I meant to do that."

Of course you did!

I'd been planning that detached retina for months. I'm surprised nobody has caught on.