Word: deere
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...small towns and family farms. These crafty Iowans have stopped feeling sorry for themselves because of the agriculture price collapse and have begun hustling. They make gin and vodka out of surplus corn, and they are thinking about growing strawberries and snails as well as soybeans. There are deer herds in the valleys, and the pheasant population is 2 million, which is not like hogs (13.8 million) or cattle (4.6 million) or even people (2.8 million), but it all means economic diversity and jobs...
...turns out to be a madonna, 3 ft. high -- perfect for a porch in Hoboken, N.J., perhaps, but maybe a little out of place dressing up a Shenandoah Valley farmer's front yard. The farmer looks around for a few minutes, then asks, "How about if I take that deer over there and pay you the difference?" The animal in question is a buck, 4 ft. high, with a brown paint job and an impressive rack of gleaming metal antlers. "That'd be fine," says Harper. He calls his sons Doug and Dale and son-in-law Russell Armentrout...
...yard is filled with concrete birdbaths, statues (including Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, gnomes, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck), decorative paving stones, planters and fountains, all neatly stacked in piles up to 6 ft. high. Most impressive is Harper's collection of concrete animals. He has 20 types of deer alone, ranging in size from a miniature fawn up to the just departed buck, and 18 kinds of frogs. There are also lifelike rabbits, geese, chickens, lambs, foxes, crocodiles, armadillos, toy poodles and blue jays. On a larger scale, Harper features full-size pigs and half-size cows and black...
...story house, Betty got a corner, where she uses an air compressor to spray-paint the animals with automotive-grade enamel. Almost from the beginning, says Harper, "I've been saying I want to slow down. But then I order more molds." That is an expensive habit: the deer mold cost him about $700 and the pig $400 or so. It would be cheaper to make his own molds, and Harper has tried it, but the job is just too time consuming. To keep the assembly line going, he needs as many as six copies of each, and he carries...
Slim and lithe in khaki pants, he moves like a deer over the desert floor -- not surprising since he spent his first 40 years in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as a wildlife biologist and tracker. "I slept on the ground most of my life," he told me. "No tent. Only a tarpaulin in case it rained. One night I woke up with a rhino sniffing my body. I just lay quietly. Another time I found a lion had eaten a whole cow next to me while I lay sleeping." He looks at his students and instructors, then out across...