Ryan Dennis

I was in elementary school when I first heard reports about this new technology called the internet. Having grown up with it as it evolved, it was up to me to tell my grandmother that Nigerian princes weren’t going to send her money or let my father know that no one from Scotland was going to put a down payment for the truck he was selling on Craigslist in upstate New York.

While fictional novels about farming have increasingly become scarce over the last century, nonfiction about agriculture remains in steady supply.

“It’s all the rage,” my father said. “Everyone is doing it.”

I was a bit skeptical. The last time my father told me about the latest rage that everyone was doing, he was referring to “finger trolling,” where you apparently tie nylon line to your finger and try to fish off a dock.

A good friend of mine is very concerned with his health. He juices carrots, goes to yoga and once visited a shaman.

It was suggested as something that would be “fun” – and granted, being a good foreign national generally meant pretending to learn the language of the country you lived in.

I sit on the couch and stare at the fat gray squirrels waddling along the electric lines. I pick up an imaginary shotgun and point it at them. I wince when I pull the trigger, but the squirrels keep chasing each other around the walnut tree.