Cows are nosy people. While I was out in the pasture collecting fresh nutrients to put in my garden, three adventuresome “boy cows” came over to see what I was doing.

Not one to waste a photo op, I set up my video camera and filmed myself hopping about before them as I flaunted my white handkerchief in the manner of a matador. It reminded me of Victor.

Photovoltaic panels generate all the electricity needed by The humble Farmer, above, and his wife, Marsha, at their home in St. George. Photo courtesy of Robert Skoglund

The humble Farmer made these solar water heaters in his barn, using glass found at the town dump. Photo courtesy of Robert Skoglund

A few years ago, Victor spent a month at the humble farm. Victor, a city boy brought up in Barcelona, where bullfights are part of the culture, could not bring himself to stand his ground in the pasture while half a dozen thousand-pound animals ran toward him.

After editing the film and adding some bullfighting background music, I put the clip up on YouTube and emailed the link to my young friend in Barcelona. Within minutes, he replied “ha ha ha” on my Facebook page.

Facebook must be one of the more recent technologies to come into vogue, as it has earned the boy who owns it only $33 billion so far.

He has done well because Facebook is whatever you want it to be. My scripts for my radio and TV shows and scraps of my newspaper columns and letters to the editor were first written as notes to my Facebook friends. For me, rambling on Facebook to anyone who will listen is the easiest way to find out what’s on my mind.

Because it is usually 15 degrees colder on the coast of Maine than anywhere else in the country, Facebook friends in faraway places are surprised to see pictures of me dressed in a snowmobile suit while putting in my garden in mid-June.

Do you post your innovative adventures with exotic foods and fine wines on Facebook, hoping that your mellow experiences will encourage others to enrich their lives by following suit?

Your comments on Facebook are a public service to your older Maine followers. Without you, we might otherwise have lived out our lives in bliss, thinking we had already plucked the apple of contentment.

Other Facebook aficionados post pictures of children or pets or some recently acquired expensive toy.

You will not see any of these on my Facebook page. Pets require too much loving care, and Marsha would rather buy her pork chops at the store, anyway.

At an early age, I realized that I could not even take care of myself and would, therefore, never be able to afford to have the children whom so many of my friends now count on for generous support in their old age.

And as for toys, the first motorcycle I drove might have been a 13-year-old 1938 Indian. I managed to get it up to 90 or so up on the straightaway by the town line. But I have a friend who broke his leg when he was knocked off his motorcycle by an inattentive driver, so motorcycles now frighten me.

Facebook is a bully pulpit for many with an economic, religious or political agenda. I never tire of posting pictures of my solar water heaters, which I built and installed with my own hands, and the photovoltaic panels on my henhouse, which generate all of our electricity.

My Facebook friends are certainly tired of hearing that we pay the power company $10.65 every month for storing our excess electricity for us. They get $127 a year instead of the $700 or $800 they were getting in pre-solar days.

What would you do if you were selling electricity and your income from each customer who put up solar panels dropped $700 each year? One or two probably wouldn’t hurt, but if 10 people put up solar panels, you’d be out $7,000 a year.

One hundred people would be $70,000. Solar panels on 1,000 Maine homes would cost you $700,000 each year. And 1,000 houses would only be those in one small town the size of St. George.

No wonder the coal and oil and power people are telling us that getting energy directly from the sun is a waste of our time and money. They are running scared and would legislate solar energy into oblivion if they could.

Not long from now, they will morph into a company that only collects electricity, either generated by their solar panels or those of their customers, and doles it back at night or on cloudy days. Anyone in their place would understandably put off this inevitable way of doing business for as long as possible.

On the coast of Maine, when the days start to get shorter and winter is on its way, you know it is warm enough to put in your garden.

So I’d better put on my snowmobile suit and get out there now. You can look on Facebook for pictures of me enriching my soil with cow nutrients.

The humble Farmer can be seen on Community Television in and near Portland and visited at his website:

www.thehumblefarmer.com/MainePrivateRadio.html

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