My Beautiful Girlfriend and I were talking about Cousin John today, and how we miss the guy. He was Brooklyn (NY) born and raised, and he and his mom (Aunt Joyce) would come visit with us when we were kids on Long Island. Many moons and a couple moves later, John and I reconnected in a very big way; and the same became true for Aunt Joyce. So what does all this have to do with a chocolate cow? Cousin John and Aunt Joyce are both living in the Great Beyond now, but I think both of them would react to the next part of this story with an emphatic, yet puzzled, Brooklyn flavored “Oh my GAWD!!”

Several years ago, a survey asked the question, “Where does chocolate milk come from?” Apparently, a thousand people were surveyed and 7 % of the people believed that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Oh my GAWD!! I wish I was fooling you!! This of course subsequently spread across the pond via the interwebs. Much of the world probably thought we’re a nation of noodleheads.

Now I don’t know what sample of our population was surveyed; but you can bet it wasn’t anyone involved in agriculture. Unfortunately, there appears to be a large amount of ignorance regarding where our food comes from or how it’s produced. Perhaps this is due to the declining number of people directly involved with raising food. There has been small progress over the years, but it seems to be creeping along all too slowly.

I’ve actually had some interesting (saddening?) first-hand experiences with this. I’ve been an organic gardener for over 50 years now; and I often grow more than I need. That gives me the freedom to share some of my harvests with friends. One time I remember vividly was when I asked a friend if they’d like some of my heirloom, organically grown popcorn. “Sure,” they said, “where did you get it?” “From my garden,” I explained. “Oh!!” they answered, wide-eyed, “I didn’t know you could grow popcorn!! How did you grow it??” “Well,” I replied, trying not to giggle, “I stick the seeds in the ground and they grow popcorn plants.” Then I couldn’t help but ask, “Where did you think popcorn came from?” One person said, “I just buy the microwave kind.”

End of discussion.

Well kids, for your horticultural edification I hereby bestow upon you some fun facts of my very own which may or may not be true but I’ll put them here anyway for the fun of it and you know it’s been a very long time since I composed a run-on sentence but I figured it was long past due and I didn’t even use any commas or semi-colons and if you can read all this in one big breath I’ll give you a quarter!!

OK… here are some spillages from my brain area:

1: At least 50% of all ladybugs are not ladies. However, I think it’s good to keep calling all of them ladybugs, because one might be accused of sectional harshment or gender indivisibility if you said something like, “Hey everyone!! Look at this cool manbug!!”

R: Eggplants do not produce eggs. Heck, the fruit doesn’t even look like eggs. And it sure doesn’t taste like eggs neither. So, like, what’s up with the name? Anyhow??

27: Now we come to another totally silly name for a food: grapefruit. Does anyone seriously think those look like grapes? Or taste anything like grapes?? Last I knew, they didn’t grow on grapefruit vines neither. Sheesh!! So if we ship many of them to market at the same time, is that considered grapefruit group freight?

OK, that’s probably enough for now. Oh wait… an old favorite:

I’ve never seen a purple cow,

I never hope to see one.

But from the milk we’re getting now,

There must quite surely be one.

Maybe we should all go hang out at Betty Boop’s farm for a “reality” check!