The humble Farmer

Selects
  • 3.7 (3)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE

The thing about The humble Farmer, Robert Skoglund is that the work speaks for itself, literally. We’ve chosen a selection of his shorter missives because these quirky snippets of northern wisdom reflect the beauty of local public media. Local interstitials are the sprigs of mint in public radio, or in the case of The humble Farmer, the bunch of rhubarb. Skoglund’s show ran for 28 years on Maine Public, which is both unsurprising and remarkable. Skoglund is an iconic Mainer. In the 1970s, he published humorous one-line personals in the Maine Times, such as: "Antique dealer seeks attractive young woman interested in one night stand." This caught the attention of local radio stations and he began hosting a show on Maine Public Radio featuring jazz music and his own style of humor. His work on Maine Public was initially pro bono but in 2006, he began receiving $30 a show. Skoglund had some controversy over airing political criticism which some interpreted as being directed at George W. Bush, and his show was eventually canceled in 2007. But in an incredible early example of podcasting, he began releasing his show as a weekly podcast in 2011 under the title: Maine Private Radio and No Things Considered. Skoglund was a pioneer of commentary and comedy, and his work is a unique window into Maine. These short works occupy the same territory as Amy Pearl’s Good Things, Bird Note, and other micro segments beloved by local listenership. This sort of verite audio is essential to the soundscape of local radio, and Skoglund’s work represents some of the best. For more about The humble Farmer, check out Skoglund’s self-made video obituary, posted to Facebook by a friend after Skoglund's death: https://www.facebook.com/gary.crocker.33/videos/927054738933100

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Episodes

  1. 12/20/2024 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    I Thought You Were Dead

    Have you ever met an old neighbor in a store or on the street who extended a withered hand and said, “My word. I thought you were dead.” If it hasn’t happened to you yet someday it will so please listen closely. Every day I record a bit of innocuous social commentary and email it to Public Radio Exchange. PRX, as it is called, might be described as a huge warehouse filled with bits and pieces of radio programs. Young wanna-be producers as well as grizzled used to be producers write and record pieces we hope intelligent people will find interesting and deposit them electronically in this warehouse called PRX. We hope that an enlightened Public Radio program manager might someday actually listen to one of our pieces and deem it worthy of broadcast. Well, there is a new PRX and I was updating my profile on the appropriate PRX web page. While posting my work experience, which was with the Treasury Department between the years of 1955 and 1957, I clicked on the little year box that you are so familiar with and saw that it only went back to 1968. Yes. If you were working in 1955, the kids who are now creating web pages have no idea that you’re still alive. Better get used to it.

    2 min

  2. 12/20/2024 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Snuggies

    Did you see the Today Show people sitting around in snowmobile suits? Well, they weren’t really snowmobile suits and they weren’t really bathrobes. My wife Marsha just told me that they are called Snuggies. Their point was that you can keep warm in a cold house by putting on one of these Snuggie things. Doesn’t it say something about our friends and neighbors who need to be told that if they dress properly they will be toasty warm? Ever since I can remember I have worn a snowmobile suit to the supper table on cold days in July and August, because I am a conscientious hedonist. I have never believed in suffering from the cold and I didn’t need to have someone tell me that dressing appropriately can alleviate suffering. As a matter of fact, I am wearing a snowmobile suit right now because it is only about 70 degrees in the room. Any man who can think has habits that make him an eccentric until the rest of the world catches up. When I was in the 6th grade I can remember hearing one of the boys say, “Spring is here --- Skoglund has his earflaps up.”

    2 min

  3. 12/20/2024 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    What is the Wind Chill Factor?

    My friend Tony says that it was 28 below in Portland, Maine this morning but that was probably after factoring in several variables. If you’ve ever watched the weather report on TV you know what I’m talking about. The temperature outside might be 15 degrees. When I was a kid, they’d let it go at that. But now, for some reason that I don’t understand, they try to make it sound worse by adding in a thing they call the wind chill factor. So now they’ll say, “It’s 15 degrees outside, but when you figure in the wind chill factor, it’s 10 below.” And then they’ll explain that 10 below is very, very cold, and that you should not go out unless you cover your hands and your face. Notice that they don’t say anything about covering your head or ears. They know that unless your IQ is higher than 140 or lower than 80, you wouldn’t be seen dead wearing a hat even in the coldest weather. Of course, if your IQ is higher than 140 or lower than 80, you don’t notice what other men are wearing so you wear whatever is comfortable. But I want to get back to this wind chill factor thing that appeared a few years ago to make our lives more miserable. Before long someone is going to figure out a way to make it even worse than that. And then you’ll hear, “It’s 10 degrees out, but with the wind chill factor it feels like 15 below. And, if you figure in the moisture factor we get from living here on the coast, it really feels like 25 below.” Every time the weather man throws out another factor to describe the temperatures in Maine, all he is really doing is driving up real estate values in Florida.

    2 min

  4. 12/20/2024 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Christmas Dinner Guests

    While seated at a dinner table you have heard people say, “Would you like some more spaghetti” or “Would you like some more beans”? But isn’t that another way of saying, “You’ve had two helpings already but would you like some more? So no matter how much of a trencherman might be sitting at our table, we try to say, “Would you like some spaghetti” or “Would you like some beans,” leaving out the “more.” You see, by leaving out the more, we aren’t implying that they have already eaten twice as much as a normal person. There are other nice ways of saying things. My friend Phyllis said that her brother always asked his guests, “How long are you able to stay?” It serves the same purpose and sounds much nicer than, “When are you leaving?”

    1 min

  5. 12/20/2024 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    A Bunch is a Bunch

    People from away don’t understand how we do things here in Maine. I have over 100 rhubarb plants and I used to give away a lot of rhubarb. But my friends didn’t want to take it when I said it was free, so I started snapping a rubber band around a handful of it and putting it on a chrome plated farm stand out by the road. You get it by the bunch, because if I ever put it out by the pound, even though it might be 8 ounces over, there would come a day when someone would howl that it was one ounce short. But a bunch is a bunch. One day, a man from away was down in the garden watching me snap it off, cut off the huge leaf, and put the stalk on the five by five inch top of an ancient blue spring scale that I carry down to the rhubarb patch. Every once in a while I’d snatch it up, snap a rubber band around it and throw the bunch aside. The man watching said, “That scale don’t work.” Of course it works. When I can’t get no more on the top of the scale and it starts to fall off, you’ve got a bunch.

    1 min
  • 5 Episodes

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Ratings & Reviews

3.7
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

The thing about The humble Farmer, Robert Skoglund is that the work speaks for itself, literally. We’ve chosen a selection of his shorter missives because these quirky snippets of northern wisdom reflect the beauty of local public media. Local interstitials are the sprigs of mint in public radio, or in the case of The humble Farmer, the bunch of rhubarb. Skoglund’s show ran for 28 years on Maine Public, which is both unsurprising and remarkable. Skoglund is an iconic Mainer. In the 1970s, he published humorous one-line personals in the Maine Times, such as: "Antique dealer seeks attractive young woman interested in one night stand." This caught the attention of local radio stations and he began hosting a show on Maine Public Radio featuring jazz music and his own style of humor. His work on Maine Public was initially pro bono but in 2006, he began receiving $30 a show. Skoglund had some controversy over airing political criticism which some interpreted as being directed at George W. Bush, and his show was eventually canceled in 2007. But in an incredible early example of podcasting, he began releasing his show as a weekly podcast in 2011 under the title: Maine Private Radio and No Things Considered. Skoglund was a pioneer of commentary and comedy, and his work is a unique window into Maine. These short works occupy the same territory as Amy Pearl’s Good Things, Bird Note, and other micro segments beloved by local listenership. This sort of verite audio is essential to the soundscape of local radio, and Skoglund’s work represents some of the best. For more about The humble Farmer, check out Skoglund’s self-made video obituary, posted to Facebook by a friend after Skoglund's death: https://www.facebook.com/gary.crocker.33/videos/927054738933100

Information

  • Channel
    Selects
  • Creator
    Selects
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    5
  • Provider
    ROOM TONE SELECTS LLC

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