Or Agriculture Aphorisms.

EVEN A BLIND PIG FINDS AND ACRON ONCE IN A WHILE

I heard this saying by a speaker at a conference a few weeks back, but under closer inspection, I found out that is should be,  A blind squirrel finds an acorn, a blind pig finds a truffle, once in a while.

Meaning: Most people think that it means that no matter how much of an underdog someone is, and no matter how unlikely it is that they succeed, they will find success. The problem with that is, a pig doesn't search for truffles by vision, but by smell, so a blind pig should be as successful finding truffles as a sighted one and needn't rely on luck.

Squirells incidentally also use their noses to find acrons and other nuts. Both pigs and dogs are used to find truffles, and I would assume a pig eats aorns (also found by smell), but I haven’t been able to find a reference for people using pigs to find acrons. This means that talking about blind pigs finding acrons means someone has mixed up two aphorisms.

So really the saying means follow your nose. We’ll dissect that saying another time!

Attributed to: Lyndon Johnson  1908-1973

Farm Sayings Friday is weekly feature of Yield Starts Here. You might think your grandparents made it up, but that old saying likely goes back many years. In this feature we will figure out who said it first and what it really means! Do you have a well used saying in your family, send to us and we'll feature it in a future blog.

Yield Starts Here is a blog for farmers, focusing on increasing yield and profitability by focusing on the soil. It is managed by Craig Dick, a Blogronomist and Sales and Marketing Manager at Calcium Products. Find other articles by Craig and guest writers at http://blog.calciumproducts.com/ .