I was having a socially distanced discussion the other day with my neighbor Jane Presby, owner of Dimond Hill Farm, the iconic 19th-century working farm and farm stand located on Route 202/9 West, just before the Hopkinton border. We were talking, as most everybody else is these days, about the COVID-19 situation, and speculating about when things might get back to “normal.”

As we were commiserating about how much our lives had changed in such a short time, the talk turned to how entertainment in this new reality was beginning to mirror the old reality, before people had so many choices and distractions. In our neighborhood, people have reverted to taking family walks, playing board games, doing jigsaw puzzles, reading actual books – reviving the low-tech amusements so often overlooked amid today’s high-tech options.

I asked Jane, whose family has operated the Dimond Hill Farm for almost 200 years, how past generations would entertain themselves. Her answer was as surprising as it is, perhaps, typically New England.

Among the expected recreations – taffy pulls, sewing bees and church socials – she said there was a lot of gambling going on.

Then she went on to talk about how clusters of Diamond Jim Bradys in bib overalls would wager on everything from when the cow would calve to whose glass of lemonade the next fly was going to land on.

At the Dimond Hill Farm, she said, the high-rollers were typically found on the front porch, where the collection of old folks and odd characters who planted themselves in the row of whitewashed, ladder-back rocking chairs were known to get pretty creative about their entertainment. As an example, she told me about the Cow Dump Derby.

Each day around four in the afternoon, she said, the porch sitters would begin jockeying for a clear view of the state highway that separates the farm proper from the hayfields and cow pastures across the road. The cows seemed to sense the excitement as well, as they wandered over toward the gate and milled about, waiting to be led across to the barn to be milked, fed and watered. They were, however, totally unaware of the part they were about to play in the afternoon sweepstakes.

As cattle-crossing signs were set out to stop commuter traffic, the hired hand moved toward the starting gate, teasing the eager porch sitters a bit by pausing to light a cigarette along the way. For their part, the 30 or so cows across the street were lining up according to their own custom, with the dominant female taking her place in the lead as the other girls pushed and shoved and mucked about in anticipation of the draining and feeding that lay ahead.

The porch sitters had nicknames for many of the cows, mostly based on some production trait or personality quirk: The Big Red One, The Frisky Young One, The Pretty One, The Angry One, The Butter Maker, The Car Sniffer, The Runner, and so on.

Every afternoon the porch sitters would wager on which cow would drop a manure flop nearest to the yellow center line as they crossed Route 202/9 (Hopkinton Road). Each porch sitter had his or her favorite, of course, and there was a lot of handicapping going on, as this was high excitement in the days before scratch tickets, cable television and computer card games.

Bets were placed as soon as the gate was opened, and there was more activity on that porch during the 10 minutes it took to get the cows across the road than during all the other minutes of the day strung together. One porch sitter or another would keep up a running commentary as the others yelled instructions to their chosen champion, urging them to let loose at just the proper moment.

Every so often a flop flap would erupt and the porch sitters would send one of the young people out to the road with a yardstick to determine which dump was, indeed, closest to the center line.

A drop directly on the line was cause for much rejoicing and backslapping, which the more seasoned commuters delayed by this activity understood, while the others were left scratching their heads and wondering what was holding up traffic for so long.

Occasionally, an impatient, out-of-state driver would lean on his horn, which caused the whole herd to let loose. When this happened, all bets were off, as this was the days before DNA testing and there was no conclusive way to settle an argument over which cow went where.

As the last of the girls crossed the street the shovels would come out and the whole mess was cleared away. Then the signs were taken in and the commuters set free to go about their business, some smiling, others muttering under their breath.

And while the cows are gone now and many of those old porch sitters have long since placed their last bet, a new crop seems always ready to fill the seats, rocking away the summer days, enjoying the view and spreading their own brand of manure.

Of course, it’s not likely that bovine bowel movements would be considered good entertainment these days, unless it was packaged into some form of downloadable game app, I guess. But the Yankee farmers’ knack for finding their own fun is something a lot of us are rediscovering in this stay-at-home environment.

And while it might be hard to come up with something to match the majesty and excitement of the Cow Dump Derby, just remember that the fun is not in the fertilizer.

(David Moore lives in Concord.)