Rankin's Top 10 Ways To Know That You're a Wisconsin County Ag Agent

10.   You finish dinner one evening and one of the kids asks your spouse, "Who was that person eating with us tonight?"

9.   You spend so much time offering weed control tips to other people that your own garden looks like a check plot in a Boerboom herbicide study.

8.   You've said, "You want a 15 minute talk? Hell, I can't say hello in 15 minutes!"

7.   You can quote from memory the going rental rate for a 10' x 40' corn crib but have a tough time remembering your spouse's birthday.

6.   You have at least one quarterly progress report that can be used as a model paper in a graduate level creative writing class.

5.   In the last year, you've spent more time talking to specialists' answering machines than you have actually talking to specialists.

4.   Ever since they took it out, you somehow miss that Pesticide Applicator Training slide of the migrant worker burying toxic waste in the field road.

3.   In spite of what your major professor said, you now know that no graduate ag program in the world could have prepared you for this job.

2.   Whenever a box comes to the office with your name on it, you now assume it's more Worker Protection Standard materials.

1.   Your typical work attire sometimes results in people mistaking you for the building janitor.