It isn't as she dreamt, but I can now say that I paid someone to attend a Penn State lab.
Sort of.
Up until a few short years ago, I knew two things about dirt. First, it made great baseball infields. Second, when you added water, it made mud.
You'd never guess that I am a college dropout.
Slowly and painfully I am learning about how life works in the land of land. Most of it is common sense. Some of it is science. When it comes to the science end of things, it's nice to know that we have a friend and resource in the Cooperative Extension Service and in Penn State University.
As far as the common sense part goes, well ... we're working on that.
One of the services the school provides is a soil sample test. After picking up a test kit containing instructions and plastic bags, I walked out in the fields and dug.
Someone at the university (an ag grad student, I'm guessing) received several small Baggies filled with brown and crumbly souvenirs from Amwell Township. A few weeks later, I received a report stating the samples' nutrient content and fertility status, along with some suggestions.
"1. Sell the farm and rent a nice furnished apartment."
Actually, the test results came with ideas about which fertilizers could return the ground to full strength.
The cost?
Nine bucks.
That's a ridiculously low price to pay to have experts at your fingertips. These are people who stayed in college, attained high degrees. Scholars, men and women who wear white lab coats and have spent their lives analyzing the earth examined my dirt. I received information and instruction from the head of the department, a scientist.
Or the janitor.
The truth is that I have no idea who performed the testing on my soil. All I know is I put the stuff in a bag and sent it away to Penn State. A few weeks later, a computer read-out arrived in the mail. What happened in between is anyone's guess.
If the soil tester in the lab coat (or Dickies coveralls) did his job, we'll have a higher yield this year. We'll follow his recommendations about fertilizer.
Why?
It says to right there on the paper. I paid nine bucks. My dirt is tired. Penn State University wants to help and has assigned their brightest scientist in his whitest lab coat to save the day.
Unless that guy called in sick.
In that case, I trust in the janitor to figure out what my hayfield's pH number should be. He may be just a night-shift maintenance supervisor who likes to play with the microscopes in the laboratory at school after everybody else has gone home, but the chances are he still knows more about soil than me.
He went back to college.
To hear Scott Paulsen's column, visit www.observer-reporter.com. He can be heard each weekday afternoon from 3 to 7 p.m. on 1250 ESPN Radio.