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Gone Awry

So many things can go awry on a farm (as Farmer Burnes well knew), among them chicken necks and pea vines.

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice and Men

Gang aft agley.”

–Robert Burnes, 1785

I was so pleased with my ingenuity when, back in March, I drew on renewable, free, local resources to stake my peas: small limbs stripped from our oak and maple trees by winter weather.

I stuck them in the ground, laced them together with twine, and for two months was lulled into complacency by the seeming success of my resourcefulness. But I failed to calculate the collective weight of peas.