“You can’t fertilize a five-acre field by farting through a fence.”
I’m reading **My Life in France **by Julia Child, and she’s quoting Clifford Wharton, the then new American Consul General to France. He’s commenting on, well, dressing down, an agent of the Foreign Buildings Office on the sad state of the housing they had provided.
It’s definitely meant to convey that a proper job had not been done. The “FBO type” had been explaining the value of two completely useless properties that the FBO had purchased and now could not unload.
Is anyone familiar with the phrase? It has kind of a ring to it and I wouldn’t want to use it improperly. Does it, for example, imply that someone is persisting in doing something that has already proved to be ineffective?
A Texan goes to England and decides to enjoy High Tea. He asks a Brit what type of tea to enjoy.
The Brit says, “There are three, old boy. Chinese Tea, which is 90% aroma and 10% substance, Indian tea, which is 90% substance and 10% aroma, and English tea, which is our PREFERRED tea.”
The Texan says, “Well we have our teas in America, too.”
“Really?” says the Brit. “Do enlighten me…”
The Texan says, "There is the FAR-T, which is 90% aroma and 10% substance, the SHI-T, which is 90% substance and 10% aroma and the CUN-T which is OUR preferred T.
Farting produces the odor of manure, but not the substance, so you *could *say it means, “You won’t get any work done farting around”.
Never encountered the phrase before, but will actively look for a chance to use it in the future. Like ministryman, it seems to imply that someone is doing a half-assed (HA!) job i.e. making the smell of fertilizer without actually applying any fertilizer to the soil.
It sounds like one of those totally bewildering faux-folksy sayings that Fred Thompson always used to have in Law & Order. Everyone would be arguing some fine point of law, and he’d cut them all off and finish the conversation with, ‘Well, like my grandpappy used to say, a wet bird never did have elbows.’
I’d assume it means you can’t get a job done by applying lots of hot air at a distance rather than something solid to the relevant point.
Just so. To raise a good crop you need to actually go into the field and lay some good honest shit down. You can’t do the job by farting daintily through the fence. In other words, you won’t get anything done if you’re not prepared to jump right in and get your hands dirty.
In this situation, it probably means that there was insufficient investment of resources to do an adequate job.
It takes a good deal of fertilizer to cover a 5-acre field, and work to spread it; obviously farting through a fence is not enough of either. Just like renovating housing, it takes a fair amount of investment to get the job done.
Like ministryman, it seems to imply that someone is doing a half-assed (HA!) job i.e. making the smell of fertilizer without actually applying any fertilizer to the soil.