“Good morning gents,” greeted Molly Whiteside when she delivered the menus at Mabel’s Grill the other morning, “Can I start you off with a coffee?”

“Of course,” mumbled George Mackenzie. “I can hardly get going before I have a coffee in the morning.”

As Molly poured the coffee, Cliff Murray looked at the stain on the front of her uniform.

“Spill something this morning?” he asked when she looked up.

“Actually it was yesterday,” Molly said, colouring slightly. “Mabel already commented on it this morning. The kids are home from school now and they distracted me from doing my laundry on time.”

“Yeah, kids home for the summer,” sighed Dave Winston, “They’re always a problem until they’re old enough to help out with the work on the farm.”

“Or until the summer camps begin,” sighed Molly.

“Unless you’re a teacher,” sighed Cliff. “My sister’s a teacher and she’s got the whole summer off to look after her kids. Me,  I stayed home on the farm and I have to keep working – bringing in the hay, combining the wheat and the beans and the corn.”

“And feeding my pigs every day,” sighed Dave.

“But teachers keep on complaining,” Cliff said. “I was at a year-end party at my sister’s last weekend, and there was a whole crew of people from her school’s staff there. They spent an hour grumbling about how hard teaching was.”

“Teachers always complain,” scoffed George.

“Unlike farmers,” slipped in Molly.

“Hey,” said Cliff, “the reason Mabel gets so much business is that it’s one place farmers can get together and share their frustrations.”

“And boy do they share them,” smirked Molly.

“The thing about teachers,” said Dave, missing Molly’s comment, “is that they get a chance to retire early and almost all of them take it.” 

“Unlike farmers who have to keep on farming,” sighed George.

“Of course there are advantages,” said Cliff. “I was reading in The Rural Voice last month – in that old geezer’s column, the one who used to be editor – that the price of farmland increased anywhere from 8.5 to 13 per cent last year, depending where you live.”  

“So you’re hardly suffering, not selling and retiring,” Molly said. “How much is a farm, say 100 acres, worth these days?”

“Well the price went anywhere from $13,800 to nearly $42,000 an acre,” Cliff explained.

“An acre!” exploded Molly. “So 100 acres would be –” she did some quick figuring – $1.3 to $4.2 million!

“And they own more than 100 acres,” called Mabel who’d been listening in the kitchen. 

“And if it went up – say 10 per cent – you earned . . .” and Molly did the quick math, “130,000 to $420,000 just sitting at home, not farming at all.”

“And they all own more than 100 acres,” Mabel called out.

“So you guys could sell out and move to town,” Molly said.

“But I like living in the country,” George commented.

“Yeah, and if he sold out and retired to town at the same age as a teacher retired, he’d be out all the money his farm increased last year,” Dave said.

“Meanwhile, I’ll have to keep on waiting tables to pay the bills,” Molly grumbled. “And I can’t even get a 15 per cent tip from you millionaires!”

“I’m not a millionaire yet,” George said, “and with the cost of farming the way it is you’re lucky to get a tip at all.”

“I’ll tell my kids to be sorry for you when all I can only afford to buy them is hamburger,” Molly said.

“You can always try ground pork,” Dave suggested. “Pork’s way cheaper than beef.”

“Which explains your small tip, but not his!” Molly grumbled. ◊