Very true about the "farmer" thing. I've heard an amazing amount of Farmer Brown stories in the few months I've been working at the shop here in Ct. My favorite is the one about the farmer who broke a con rod in his tractor, and instead of fixing the rod, or even removing the damn thing and the piston, he just simply welded what was left of the broken rod and piston to the crankshaft. This way he didn't have to pull the heads off or make any other costly repairs. The thing clanked and banged around like all hell but ran fine.
Gotta love it!