Boiling it down

My dad’s uncle took over the family farm in Sweden after his parents passed away. The farm was located smack dab in the middle of nowhere. He lived there alone with the livestock for his entire life, after a teenage romance went sour and he swore off women.

One of his amusements was to name his animals after family members. One of them was a bull he didn’t like. Apparently the bull was lazy. So naturally he named it after his brother-in-law.

From what I’ve been told, one day he stood and looked at the bull in its manger, shook his head, and said, “We only keep you around for the fertilizer.”

Lots of that going around these days.