Friday, December 17, 2021 | Country Acres • Page 7
Comedy in the country
Short days, long winter evenings
With the winter setting in and the all ages, and both men and women. Hey, just new year just around the corner, it seems trying to help out! like a great time to indulge in some sort Learn a new game and, if you are alone, of pastime. It just so happens that farmers find someone to play it with. For example, and ranchers sometimes forgo hobbies I’m not sure how I reached my current age for, you guessed it, more work. without knowing how to play the board That was always the case for Paul game Sequence, but my husband, Don, and Zimny of Cyrus – unless you call a winter I played this last week while visiting famcareer a hobby, that is. It was such a pleaily. It’s like tic-tac-toe on steroids, with sure visiting with Paul and Carol about cards and longer sequences. We didn’t win their lives together, and honestly, there Random Reflections every game but, with a little aggressive deby Diane Leukam was so much to the story that had to be termination, we took the match against our left out due to lack of space. much-younger foes. Not that age really has The Zimnys farmed during the summers in North anything to do with it, but still, it was fun beating Dakota, and in winter, Paul was a full-time aviation them. mechanic for many years. After they moved to their Speaking of aggression, have you ever tried Carcurrent farm in Minnesota, they continued to farm in bles, Rummikub or Catan? There are limitless numthe summer, and Paul built airplanes in his spare time bers of board and card games out there. as a hobby. Mind you, he is 95 years old and just sold Speaking of speaking, how about learning a new his last plane a couple months ago. He bought it at language? Try Duolingo, an app where you can spend age 92 and restored it before marketing it to a young as little as five minutes a day – or however long you man from Colorado. wish – learning almost any language you wish. In our It wasn’t that Paul didn’t have time for other area, some of the more popular ones to try might be hobbies, like painting (he did a portrait of his father) Spanish (27 million learners on the app currently), and building model airplanes. Together, he and Car- German (9 million) and Norwegian (1 million), but ol shared wonderful adventures, like flying together you could step out of the box and go for Russian, in an ultralight plane he built or spending time with Yiddish, Navajo or even Klingon. family and their many friends, both here and in AriI signed up for the Spanish not too long ago. It zona. is helping me brush up on the classes I had in high I don’t know about you, but whenever I meet school; dusting off might be a better description. I someone like this, it tends to make me wonder what I have no idea how long I will keep it up, but it’s kind do with all my time. But, it also gives me great hope; of fun. at age 61, if I were to have the longevity of Paul (CarOther hobby options might be taking an online ol is much younger at age 82), I would have at least class, baking bread, cooking, woodworking, bowlanother three and a half decades to get things done. ing, listening to old vinyl records or feeding the birds. Imagine that. Another one I personally enjoy is taking one room We are not all made the same way and we’re not each winter and giving it a facelift. all going to be doing those things in our mid-90s; it’s The sky is the limit, and each of us could find just not very realistic. God willing, though, we can something interesting to get us through the short days all enjoy today. and long winter evenings. If you have any hobbies I did a little research into some hobbies that could you would like to share with our readers, just send keep us busy during the long cold winter evenings. them my way at diane@saukherald.com. The search garnered some fairly interesting results. We’ll see you in a month, when we will welcome These suggestions are quite varied and include some new readers in three more counties to the west. personal experiences; they might appeal to people of Merry Christmas!
“How do I get the star up to the top of the silo?”
*Reprinted with permission from “The Farmer’s Bathroom Book,” by Marvin Jensen. COMEDY IN THE COUNTRY SPONSORED BY:
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