Ed Gulley is a dairy farmer, an artist, a sculptor and one of my best and most valued friends.I love Ed, Maria thinks we were twins separated at birth, which surprised me, but is, I think, at least partially true.

Ed does not make telephone calls during the day, very few old-school farmers do, they are way too busy, day and night.  Ed has never called me on the phone. If I had a heart attack and was rushed to the emergency room, Ed would not call me, his wife Carol might text me, or he would just come and visit. He would not call.

This morning, Ed called me for the first time in our friendship.

I worried that something awful had happened. What was so important that it would yield the first phone call?

My frozen latch, of course. That is not a small thing to a farmer.

Ed read on my blog that our latch gate was frozen these last two mornings, and that we had poured warm water to loosen it up. Ed was concerned, he told me that if we poured water on on the latch, it would just build up, freeze all the more and become even more of a problem.

I was touched by Ed’s call (I did grasp the problem with warm water and was planning to go to the hardware store and buy some liquid spray de-icer, but Ed knows I am dumb enough to do it for awhile) and also by his solution. It was such a classic farmer solution and way of thinking that I wanted to share it. He said I should take a handful of rice kernels, wrap them in a washcloth, and when the latch was  frozen, warm it up somehow (the oven, microwave, the clothes dryer) and then take it outside and press it against the latch.

I told Ed my de-icer plan, but he was not enthusiastic. Sometimes, the de-icers corrode metal. I could tell this going to the hardware store was not a Gulley idea, or a farmer idea. It cost money. And did not involve bartering, calling a relative, or going out into one of the barns for some ancient piece of equipment.

The rice/washcloth idea works every time, he said, it was what his father did and what he did.

I actually heard from a bunch of farmers, many are on Facebook now or have e-mail.

One used heated up engine oil, another pressed some warmed-up meat against the latch, another brought boiling water in a canteen and poured it on the latch – “if you bring enough, it’ll melt all the ice,” another used a hammer and tapped it against the latch until it opened. The downside of this, he said, was that eventually the latch would wear out, or if it was cold enough, even break right off.

One more suggested a variation of Ed’s idea – hard corn kernels warmed up and put in an old sock. Another said lima beans would do the same trick.

I noticed one thing about these ideas, and this is always true of Ed’s ideas: none of them cost any money or involved a trip to my sacred shrine and lifeline, the Ace hardware store. I am greeted with suspicion there, Maria returns almost everything I buy my self, and they won’t sell me anything dangerous, like a big saw or an axe at all. Maria has to call and approve it.

But they are generous with their advice and ideas.

Frugality is the farmer’s creed, they have no extra money, they never buy anything new, and they are astonishingly inventive. Not in a million years would I have thought of rice and a washcloth.

But as Ed knows quite well, I am not a farmer, I come from a different world. I love farms and farmers but I am not one. I am a writer with a farm, married to an artist with a farm (Maria is just as cheap as Ed, and she collects less stuff,  she considers buying anything retail a violation of human decency. They are great friends).

So while Maria was volunteering at the Food Co-Op, I decided the rice plan was too complex for me. I’d lost the rice or forget it or misplace it altogether, and would never remember to bring it out to the pasture gate, so I’d have to plod back and forth and root around and microwave the damned thing before hauling it back outside, and then not losing or dropping it (Ed doesn’t hold a camera while he works).

So I drove to the hardware store with Fate (she loves the hardware store, there is a can of biscuits by the cash register and she is spoiled rotten there, as if she wasn’t already). j Bryan was there. I asked him about the rice/washcloth idea and he looked at me strangely, as if a frog was sitting on my head. He sent a staffer  to aisle Four and Beverly came back and handed me a can of spray de-icer, which does not corrode metal, can be stored out in the barn, and works instantly. It can also be used on the car locks and windows.

It cost $2.36 and should last through the winter. I tried it when I got home. As Ed had predicted, the latch was frozen again. One hit with the de-icer and the latch slid open According to Bryan, it will also leave a thin film that will last a day or so in normal winter weather.

I am  especially fond of farmers, they are the unsung heroes of modern life, left behind, taken for granted, but possessed of a way of life that is meaningful and valuable and has fed the earth for all time. They have no extra dollars lying around, every day is a rainy day, and they possess great ingenuity and folk wisdom. When they are all finally driven away by corporate farms and government bureaucrats, it will be an enormous and irreplaceable loss.

Ed’s birthday is Saturday and we are joining him and Carol for dinner. One day he will call me up just to chat, and then I will know the world has really changed.