"Please don't show this catalogue to B-n--a;  we're considering selling this in our store.."
 --overheard at a family gathering.

The History of Innovative Ideas
In Our Small Community...

By Coddled Waterman 

Well, the Sumerian knew a good thing when he saw it.    He stopped trading and bought some good bottom land near the Euphrates, raised camels, and set up shop as the world's first dairy.    He tried to keep his methods secret for a while, but eventually someone improved on them, used cows instead of camels,  added a bit of salt, and herbal flavorings, even natural dyes, and, before you knew it the world had every conceivable style and flavor of cheese imaginable--feta, cheddar, bleu, sharp, mild, medium, grated, melted, and cubed.   

Some would argue that's a good thing...

But we must consider the enormous confusion this creates in the market.    Where can we find that TOTALLY ORIGINAL Sumerian camel cheese, churned into a tasty curd by a thousand mile journey across the desert?

We can't.   There have been far too many innovators.    The original discoverer of cheese died of a heart attack in a frustrated attempt to get the Sumerian Health Authority to decertify his neighbor's dairy cattle.    "AFTER ALL," he is reported to have yelled, before expiring, "It was MY IDEA--er, I mean, discovery!"

In the spirit of trying to avoid this catastrophe here on Riley's Farm, perhaps we need to get back to some founding guidelines.     We need to find out who planted the first apple trees and then let that guy, if he's still around, have the  monopoly on apples.      We need to find out who wore historical clothing first and then get everybody else back into totally contemporary clothing.   It's only fair.  

The multiplicity of drinking fountains is another problem.   After going to all of the trouble of making a drinking fountain look like an old-fashioned hand pump, why should we let someone else order the same thing from the Lehman's catalogue?   (The Lehman's people, by the way, aren't helping.   They're selling these beautiful Victorian hand pumps to literally thousands of living history farms across the country.    That's got to be a big hit for the first guy to have installed one of these things.)

Let's look at cider as well.   Okay-that is an ancient thing and mankind has been making apple cider as long as we've had apples--probably right back to the Garden of Eden, but, heah, can't we have some regional monopolies on the stuff?    Wouldn't it be much more convenient for one place to do all the cider and force all the consumers to wait in line for it?     Wouldn't that teach the customer some respect?

I wasn't going to mention this, but let's look at the country store phenomenon up here.     We've got all these really cute antique and variety stores that reflect the unique personalities of the people who have created them.    You can buy everything from a Daniel Boon pop gun to a Cape Cod ladder back chair up here, but sometimes--get this--some stores have SOME OF THE EXACT SAME THINGS IN THEM.    It's scandalous.    If one gal wakes up one night and says to herself, "this is a scenic place, we ought to sell disposable cameras!", well, dang it, that ought to be her idea for life.    Let's show a little respect.   Even if you have to send some poor mother five miles across the glen just to take a picture of her little pumpkin-pickers that's the price we're going to have to pay for integrity.

We've also got to remember that it was one person's idea, to call this place a "family farm."   That was a really good idea and it had a lot to do with buying this land in the first place, but  far too many members of the family have been calling this place a family farm.    That was a PROPRIETARY IDEA, and only the original people who called this a family farm should treat the place like a family farm.    Let's get that straight among other members of the family.

There's going to be a lot of work devoted to who can sing which songs and who can play which instruments, but I maintain it will be worth it.    There are whole parts of American history, as well, which some people here should not even mention because they weren't the first ones to mention them.    I was the first one here, for example, to mention the Battle of the Crooked Billet, and I don't want any of the customers being told about that battle unless they come to me?   Is that understood?   

Square dancing:   all right, we all know who invented square dancing on the farm.    That person can have square dancing, no objections, but the u-squirt cow-milking concession is mine, do you understand?  MINE, MINE, MINE.    In fact anything to do with dairy is mine.    And cheese too!

Did I mention cheese?