farming-life
Original: farming-life on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Girl (with red hair): Great-great grandfather, what was it like, being a simple farmer, looking after crops and herds?
Grandfather (ghostly green figure): So beautiful.
Panel 2:
Grandfather: Why we had fields and fields of apples and enough lead arsenate to keep all the pests away.
Panel 3:
Girl: Didn't that get in the food?
Grandfather: Sure did! Did you know arsenic increases the growth rate of livestock?
Panel 4:
Grandfather: Gosh, those were the days. Why, we didn't worry about a thing, except for the bottom falling out of prices and having to sell our farms because we couldn't pay the mortgage.
Panel 5:
Grandfather: Kids can only live off apples for so long before their digestion starts to break down and muscles won't grow.
Panel 6:
Girl: Okay, how many ancestors do I have to go back to get to a charming farm experience?
Grandfather: Eventually you'll get to a feudal overlord, which sounds pretty nice.
Votey:
Grandfather (rendered as a simple line drawing): 'Course they still had the plague...
Girl (with red hair): Great-great grandfather, what was it like, being a simple farmer, looking after crops and herds?
Grandfather (ghostly green figure): So beautiful.
Panel 2:
Grandfather: Why we had fields and fields of apples and enough lead arsenate to keep all the pests away.
Panel 3:
Girl: Didn't that get in the food?
Grandfather: Sure did! Did you know arsenic increases the growth rate of livestock?
Panel 4:
Grandfather: Gosh, those were the days. Why, we didn't worry about a thing, except for the bottom falling out of prices and having to sell our farms because we couldn't pay the mortgage.
Panel 5:
Grandfather: Kids can only live off apples for so long before their digestion starts to break down and muscles won't grow.
Panel 6:
Girl: Okay, how many ancestors do I have to go back to get to a charming farm experience?
Grandfather: Eventually you'll get to a feudal overlord, which sounds pretty nice.
Votey:
Grandfather (rendered as a simple line drawing): 'Course they still had the plague...
Alt text
A six-panel comic. A red-haired girl talks with the glowing green ghost of her great-great grandfather, a simple farmer. She asks what farm life was like; he answers 'So beautiful,' then proceeds to describe it in increasingly grim terms: fields of apples sprayed with lead arsenate to kill pests, arsenic that got into the food and was used to boost livestock growth, children whose digestion broke down and muscles stopped growing from living off apples, and the constant threat of losing the farm to a mortgage when prices crashed. In the final panel she asks how far back she has to go to find a charming farm experience; he replies that eventually she'll reach a feudal overlord, which sounds pretty nice. Votey: a sketchy line drawing of the grandfather's face adds, ''Course they still had the plague...'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.