World's best farmer joke

[Vort]

It took me a moment to figure out why this was funny. It has become my favorite farmer joke.

A farmer won the lottery. A reporter asked him, "You have enough money now to do anything you want. What are you going to do?" The farmer replied, "I guess I'll go home and farm until the money runs out."

[JohnsonJones]

Ouch...

[Vort]

The joke works for those who know farmers. A couple of relevant characteristics of farmers:

• The best farmers truly love farming. They embrace or at least tolerate the heavy physical work aspect of farming while enjoying the lifestyle. They feel like they provide an important service to the world, perhaps the most important service, and they revel in that feeling.
• Farmers struggle to remain profitable. Eighty- to hundred-hour work weeks are common, especially at harvest, so it's an all-consuming job. Yet expenses are high. Equipment maintenance can cost many hundreds or even thousands of dollars per repair, assuming it's a DIY issue; if something needs to be taken into a third-party shop for service, that eats up valuable time and usually costs a lot more in dollar spending. The seed itself usually has to be bought every year, and is a considerable expense. Equipment operation is more than maintenance, with fuel costs being the obvious continuing large expense. But the capital costs of the farming equipment, especially for full replacement or update, is huge. If the crop does poorly or the market is oversupplied, farmers can take a bath big-time. Many farmers are always one bad harvest away from bankruptcy—or at least that's their perception.

The joke leverages both of these stereotyped characteristics. If the farmer could do anything in the world—anything—the most enjoyable and fulfilling activity he could image would be...farming. And since he just won the lottery and is flush with cash, that would perhaps pay the losses on his farming activity for some (finite) period of time.

The joke was told to me at Church by a wonderful lady that I've known for quite a few years. Sister Davies is sharp as a tack, a walking encyclopedia of knowledge about Church history and a wide range of other topics, and very familiar with farming as she grew up on a farm (or maybe a ranch; not quite sure). I was talking with her about my experiences as a somewhat sheltered teenage boy who had always lived in town (albeit usually small towns) working summers for a farmer. As I said, when she told me the joke, I stood there for several seconds processing it. After maybe five or ten seconds, my brain figured it out. The non-obvious (to me) nature of the humor made the joke all the more satisfying, so now it's my favorite farmer joke.

A year ago, I worked at a job where my manager started each day with someone in the group telling a joke. This was a group of culturally and ethnically diverse, mostly young (early 20s to perhaps mid-30s, except for the manager and myself), fairly highly educated folks (BA/BS/MS degree earners). I told them the above farmer joke. Fell totally flat. No one laughed. No one understood it. I was surprised, because I assumed that at least some others had grown up working on farms at some point. The reality for that group was that no one had ever worked on a farm. As far as they were concerned, meat and milk came from the store.

The next time it was my turn, I told them a joke that I was just absolutely sure would crack them all up:

A biologist, an engineer, and a mathematician are seated at a cafe and watching a house across the street. Two people go into the house. A short time later, three people leave the house. The biologist proclaims, "Ah! They have reproduced!" The engineer remarks, "The measurement error is ±1 person." The mathematician says, "If one more person goes into that house, it will be empty."

Crickets. Not a chuckle. Sometimes you just can't win.

[NeuroTypical]

A college degree ain't what it used to be.  

[Ironhold]

4 hours ago, Vort said:

The joke works for those who know farmers. A couple of relevant characteristics of farmers:

• The best farmers truly love farming. They embrace or at least tolerate the heavy physical work aspect of farming while enjoying the lifestyle. They feel like they provide an important service to the world, perhaps the most important service, and they revel in that feeling.
• Farmers struggle to remain profitable. Eighty- to hundred-hour work weeks are common, especially at harvest, so it's an all-consuming job. Yet expenses are high. Equipment maintenance can cost many hundreds or even thousands of dollars per repair, assuming it's a DIY issue; if something needs to be taken into a third-party shop for service, that eats up valuable time and usually costs a lot more in dollar spending. The seed itself usually has to be bought every year, and is a considerable expense. Equipment operation is more than maintenance, with fuel costs being the obvious continuing large expense. But the capital costs of the farming equipment, especially for full replacement or update, is huge. If the crop does poorly or the market is oversupplied, farmers can take a bath big-time. Many farmers are always one bad harvest away from bankruptcy—or at least that's their perception.

The joke leverages both of these stereotyped characteristics. If the farmer could do anything in the world—anything—the most enjoyable and fulfilling activity he could image would be...farming. And since he just won the lottery and is flush with cash, that would perhaps pay the losses on his farming activity for some (finite) period of time.

Some months ago a would be "young radical" type was on social media talking about how farmers actually count as "petit bourgeoisies" rather than laborers because of how expensive tractors and other farm equipment are. 

Suffice to say that *he* very quickly became the butt of the joke as people tried to explain everything to him and gave up after the magnitude of his ignorance about how the world worked became clear. 

[popatr]

My dad told me this joke long ago:

What did the farmer say when he saw three deep holes in the ground? "Well well well"