I was beset with numerous challenges back when I was a beginning dairy farmer. There were the ho-hum things such as wrestling with finances and farming with rickety, worn-out machinery. But there were also some really important issues like formulating the precise mixture of junk to haul around in the box of my pickup.

All of those pale in comparison to the biggest challenge I faced as young farmer: procuring a girlfriend.

My procurement system worked like this: I would saunter up to a pair of Possible Future Girlfriend candidates and dazzle them with my smooth banter.

“Hi,” I would say.

“Hi,” one of them might reply and resume talking to her companion. I would interpret this feigned disinterest as an encouraging sign.

“How’s it going?” I would ask the back of her head.

“OK, I guess,” she might reply over her shoulder.

“I’m a dairy farmer,” I’d offer.

“Yeah,” she might reply, wrinkling her nose, “I can smell that.”

I didn’t like to beat around the bush so I might say something like, “So. You want to go out Friday night?”

“I can’t. I’m washing my hair.”

“I see. So, how about Saturday night?”

“I’m washing my hair that night too.”

“How about Sunday night? Or the night after that?”

“Don’t you get it? I’m washing my hair every night for the rest of my life!”

“I see. What are you doing after that?”

I had a very long streak of disappointments using this system. Then, out of the blue, the mailman delivered hope in the form of an unexpected dividend check from the co-op.

I examined the check, certain that it was a practical joke. It wasn’t.

What should a young Norwegian bachelor farmer do with this windfall?

There was the fuel bill, the feed bill, and of course the bank would always welcome a loan payment. After due consideration, I did the most logical thing possible: I purchased a used pool table.

Owning a pool table bestowed my banter with a suave sophistication. Listening to me talking to a Possible Future Girlfriend probably sounded like a real estate agent describing a new listing.

“The walk-in ranch style home is nestled in a secluded country setting and is surrounded by a grove of mature shade trees. The house sports all the usual amenities, including a full-sized billiard table!”

The truth was that the pool table was about the only piece of furniture that I owned at the time. It would be a few years before I could swing the purchase of a TV. This caused me to be deprived of the many intellectual opportunities of that era. To this day, I feel out of the loop whenever the talk turns to “The Dukes of Hazzard” or “Charlie’s Angels.”

By dangling the prospect of a pool table, I was able to entice a few members of the female persuasion out to my little farm. Most left in a snit of disillusionment as soon as they discovered that “secluded” meant “way out in the boonies” and “rustic little hideaway” translated into a “rundown old farmhouse.”

Our eldest son topped me in the real estate sales department when he was in kindergarten. As the school bus pulled away from our driveway one cold winter afternoon, I saw two little figures walking toward our farmstead. There should have been only one.

Our son and his classmate (a certain Sarah I had heard him mention) tottered out to the north side of our granary. I followed them and they stopped beside an enormous snowdrift that had formed there.

“Here it is!” our son exclaimed as he pointed at the drift. Sarah nodded appreciatively.

I herded the kids into our house, and my wife gave them an orange juice and Ritz crackers tea party. We tried to determine where Sarah actually belonged. Sarah wasn’t quite sure; when asked what her mother’s name was, she replied, “Mommy.”

Sarah didn’t seem concerned, so we sat and enjoyed faux tea and scones while we waited for the inevitable frantic phone call from her parents.

After Sarah’s mom had collected her, my wife informed me that I had better have a talk with MY son. It seems that he had lured Sarah off the bus with the promise of a close-up view of a volcano.

I took the boy to his room and, in a voice loud enough for his mother to hear, scolded, “A volcano! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! No more National Geographic TV shows for you, young man!”

Then I pulled him close and gave him a hug. “Atta boy!” I whispered. “You’ve already outshone your dad!”

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com