If you’re fair to middling (or with the g dropped: fair to middlin’), you’re doing just fine. A native of the Tennessee mountains wonders about the origin of this phrase her good-humored grandfather used. As it turns out, fair to...
You may remember the call we had from Tony in Encinitas, California. He was curious about the term for an unusual hazing ritual.
cow-pooling n.— «If you prefer to keep the image of meat—say, a juicy hamburger—safely separated from the image of an actual animal—say, a 1,200-lb. castrated bull—then cow-pooling is not for you. Jean Edwards is clearly not squeamish...
edge feathering n.— «Boulden and his son, Jordan, created patches of woody cover for quail at the edges of cropland and CRP fields by felling small trees, a practice known as edge feathering.» —“Howard County Farmer’s Story Reflects...
rent-a-cow attrib.— «He was among the first to decry dastardly rent-a-cow schemes, which allow land speculators to get millions of dollars of tax breaks intended for legitimate farmers and ranchers.» —“Assessing the assessor After...
shoot, shovel and shut up v. phr.— «Worse, the law may actually speed up extinctions. Farmers have an incentive to destroy protected species before the biologists find them—a practice known as “shoot, shovel and shut up...