A classic Lazy Farmer verse appeared in the June 16, 1951 Ohio Farmer.
Late June’s the time that ruins me, from now ’til fall arrives, by gee,
I won’t be worth a single cent because I figure summer’s meant
For sleeping, fishing and to rest, that’s why I like it much the best.
Some folks have such peculiar brains that they go thru all sorts of pains
To work and slave in summer heat, then crawl to bed all tired and beat.
They sap their strength, their blood runs thin and after days of sweating in
A broiling summer sun, they look like something that a careless cook
Has either fried an hour too long or mixed up entirely wrong.
What work in June I have to do, and in July and August too,
I get done in dawn’s early light or in the first cool hours of night.
Thruout the day I take my ease beneath the shade of pasture trees
Or snooze upon a pile of hay where sun can’t boil my strength away.
That way, I claim, I’ll be alive long after I am eighty-five,
And if my neighbors are unkind and call me “lazy,” I don’t mind,
‘Cause if I skip a chore or two Mirandy always will come thru;
And isn’t work good for a wife if it helps to lengthen her man’s life?
In October of 1951, the Lazy Farmer waxed poetic about the joys of hunting.
Mirandy can’t quite understand why I don’t hardly raise a hand
To help around the place at all, and yet at hunting time each fall
I’ll tramp and climb and grunt and strain until my backs in awful pain.
When I’ve worked myself to a nub and ask her if she’ll kindly rub
My aching muscles, she will say: “How come you lay around all day
In winter, spring and summer too, insisting that you cannot do
A lick of work because you ail, and then come fall, you never fail
To grab your gun and lose your head a’huntin’ ’till you’re almost dead?”
My gosh, I’d think that anyone could see that hunting’s lots of fun;
There’s nothing will pink up your cheeks and make you feel first-rate for weeks
Quite like forgetting ev’ry care while you gulp in the crisp fall air
And get clear off where you’re alone, where you can feel the world’s your own.
It is an old instinct of men, which still shows ev’ry now and then,
That makes ’em want to match their wit with Mother Nature for a bit.
Besides a man will always find more fun in things of any kind
Which he does of his own free choice instead of at his master’s voice.
July 2, 1949, brought this commentary on Independence Day and politicians, but no mention of “Mirandy”.
July the Fourth’s the only day on which I’d go out of my way
To eat my dinner off the ground with ants and flies a-crawlin’ round.
For most the year I will insist that picnics never would be missed,
‘Cuz normally I can not stand to eat food that’s been mixed with sand
or have to keep a wary eye out for bugs upon the lemon pie.
I don’t agree that lemonade is quite the finest drink that’s made;
There’s something better, it would seem, than lappin’ up some warm ice cream
Or takin’ my post-dinner nap with some strange youngster on my lap.
However, Independence Day is one time I just can’t stay away
From our big picnic in the park, I like to go and stay ’til dark.
The disadvantages are there but this one day I do not care;
Somehow the year is not complete unless I stand out in the heat
And hear some judge or senator who is an old-time orator.
It always makes me feel that we have got a darn good land, by gee,
‘Cuz while he’s viewin’ with alarm, I look around and know that harm
Can’t come to people smart enough to sleep right through that kind of stuff.