August 31 is one of my very favorite weird special days. It's Cow Chip Tossing Day! We think this was an idea cooked up by some Wisconsin dairy farmer as a way to get people to pick up all the cow chips (that's cow poop to you city slickers) and fling them somewhere else so he didn't have to. The idea caught on and now, all across the fruited plain, in livestock producing areas everywhere, annual cow chip tossing contests and festivals have sprung up - usually on this last day of August when the dog days of summer have had time to thoroughly quick dry some very nice, tossable cow patties. The secret is in the drying. Wet or crumbly cow chips just don't toss well. My grandpa used to collect them in spring and dry them on a rack in the sun over the summer. Just before the competition, he'd spray paint his chips gold. He kept one on his desk as a paperweight. It had a squishy foam pad glued to the bottom to freak out inquisitive children who couldn't resist picking it up.
Tell your sweetie you love her and that's no bull@#$% with this
Cow Chip Tossing Day card.
Just click on the
caption below the picture of the chip tosser. The
link will take you to a pdf file in Google
Docs. Remember, instead of printing from Google Docs, click
on "File" in the upper left corner, then select "Download" and copy the
file to your own computer. Open it with Adobe PDF Reader or whatever
PDF reader you use and print the card from there. For some reason Google
Docs doesn't handle fonts well, even though they are supposed to be
embedded in the PDF document itself.
This is a side fold card, so when it prints, be sure to tell your
printer it's in "landscape" format so you get the whole file. Flip
it
on the short side to print double-sided. This will
save you a lot of time for making your beloved one of those decorative authentic cow chip tossing day commemorative paperweights she's always wanted!
© by Tom King
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