美国国家公共电台 NPR A Farm-To-Table Board Game, For Manure Audiences Only

A Farm-To-Table Board Game, For Manure¹ Audiences Only

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Dave Matthews loves to play Chickapig. It's a board game that's sometimes called Farmer's Chess. It was created by Brian Calhoun, who's made acoustic² guitars for Matthews and other stars like Keith Urban and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Until now, the game has been pretty much like Calhoun's guitars - custom-made and available only by mail. That may change with a new book and plans to sell it in stores. Desire Moses brings us the story.

DAVE MATTHEWS: We're going to see who goes first. Do you want to see if you're going to go first?

DESIRE MOSES, BYLINE³: Dave Matthews is sitting in his tour bus at a table inlaid with a custom Chickapig board.

MATTHEWS: If you roll one and you just want to move the cow one and not poo, that’s your decision. Although I would always poo.

MOSES: That's just one of the obstacles as you make your way across the board. The goal is to get your flock of fantastical creatures safely to their destination poo-free. And Matthews wants to make it hard for his playing partner, Brian Calhoun. Calhoun says he came up with the little chicken-pig hybrids⁴ that give the game its name while doodling. He turned them into game pieces in his guitar shop.

BRIAN CALHOUN: I was going through our guitar scrap⁵ wood and, you know, pulling out scraps⁶ from, like, nice red spruce tops and cutting them into little squares and drawing chicken-pig hybrids on them with colored pencils.

MOSES: Calhoun grew up on a farm and only intended to share the game with his friends. But word got around, and he enlisted⁷ his mom to make the cow pieces out of clay. Eventually demand was so great he turned to a local printing company in his home base of Charlottesville, Va.

CALHOUN: And they have a laser machine, and they can cut out the Chickapigs with the laser. And it leaves this cool, kind of burnt edge, and it just looks organic. It looks like it was made on a farm somewhere.

MOSES: The fact that everything's locally produced appeals to Dave Matthews, who has a home in Charlottesville.

MATTHEWS: I like playing board games. I'm not a crazy gamer, but it's really original. I just think it's a brilliant variation on a very traditional idea.

MOSES: Matthews is now a partner helping⁸ to make promotional videos and posting on social media. Brian Calhoun hosts Chickapig events at local vineyards and bars.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: You need to move (laughter).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: We need a cow to go here.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I'm going to be very sad if somebody rolls a one.

MOSES: It was at one of these game nights that Calhoun gained a fan in Pete Fenlon, a board game publisher whose credits include the popular German game Settlers of Catan.

PETE FENLON: The No. 1 and No. 2 features of a great game is that it's fun and then it's fun. And in the case of Chickapig, it was fun, and there was some depth to it.

MOSES: Fenlon became an unpaid⁹ mentor¹⁰ to Calhoun, answering questions about development and marketing¹¹. Calhoun turned to Kickstarter, raising enough money to produce 5,000 games. In much the same way he built his guitar business demoing instruments at concerts and festivals, Calhoun took a batch¹² of games to various events, setting up Chickapig tents. He says they soon filled with kids, and that's when he got the idea to bring Chickapig into the classroom.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: I just saw that. I'm like, oh, I should've put the cow over there.

MOSES: He partnered with the Charlottesville Area Independent Schools Initiative, which was looking for intramural activities to get students from different schools together. They formed their own Chickapig leagues, and 16-year-old Mattias Zuffoletti was one of the team captains.

MATTIAS ZUFFOLETTI: You can make comparisons to chess, or I like to say it's like pool because you have to - every move is a set-up. And it's all about the ricochets and the angles. But it's like nothing you've ever played before, and it's a ridiculously fun time. It's awesome¹³.

MOSES: It's also helped students at the Virginia Institute of Autism develop their social skills, says teacher Jake Frazier, who invited Calhoun to speak in a class on entrepreneurship.

JAKE FRAZIER: To bring him in as an inventor to talk about how he just liked guitars and then he wanted to make guitars and how it was just a hobby and turned into a successful business just from scratch and everything's local - I thought it was the best motivation for them. This guy had a dream, and he made it possible. You're completely capable, autism or not, to do the same exact thing.

MOSES: Chickapig got its own tour bus, and former U.S. chess champion Judah Brownstein, who's a friend of Calhoun's, set off for the West Coast in a custom-painted van to promote the game in much the same way, says Calhoun, that independent bands promote themselves.

CALHOUN: Up-and-coming bands - they have street teams. If they go to a town, they have people that help them out just because they like the band. And so we're asking people, help us host these events by inviting¹⁴ all your friends. And Judah shows up and teaches everybody how to play. It's a free party. It's like a band playing in a house show.

MOSES: It's Chickapig makes its way across the country, Dave Matthews has another idea for Calhoun if he ever wants to make a different model.

MATTHEWS: I was just thinking you should make a guitar with a Chickapig board on the back with magnets in it so you can...

CALHOUN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: ...Play some bluegrass, and then you can flip¹⁵ over the guitar (laughter).

MOSES: Or you could just get a board installed in your tour bus.

MATTHEWS: So see; I'm already - I'm so out of practice, this game of strategy and pooing.

MOSES: For NPR News, I'm Desire Moses.

1 manure   

n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥

参考例句：

• The farmers were distributing manure over the field.农民们正在田间施肥。
• The farmers used manure to keep up the fertility of their land.农夫们用粪保持其土质的肥沃。

2 acoustic   

adj.听觉的，声音的；(乐器)原声的

参考例句：

• The hall has a fine acoustic.这个大厅的传音效果很好。
• Animals use a whole rang of acoustic, visual,and chemical signals in their systems of communication.动物利用各种各样的听觉、视觉和化学信号来进行交流。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 hybrids   

n.杂交生成的生物体( hybrid的名词复数 )；杂交植物（或动物）；杂种；（不同事物的）混合物

参考例句：

• All these brightly coloured hybrids are so lovely in the garden. 花园里所有这些色彩鲜艳的杂交花真美丽。 来自辞典例句
• The notion that interspecific hybrids are rare is ill-founded. 有一种看法认为种间杂种是罕见的，这种看法是无根据的。 来自辞典例句

5 scrap   

n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废

参考例句：

• A man comes round regularly collecting scrap.有个男人定时来收废品。
• Sell that car for scrap.把那辆汽车当残品卖了吧。

6 scraps   

油渣

参考例句：

• Don't litter up the floor with scraps of paper. 不要在地板上乱扔纸屑。
• A patchwork quilt is a good way of using up scraps of material. 做杂拼花布棉被是利用零碎布料的好办法。

7 enlisted   

adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持）

参考例句：

• enlisted men and women 男兵和女兵
• He enlisted with the air force to fight against the enemy. 他应募加入空军对敌作战。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

8 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

9 unpaid   

adj.未付款的，无报酬的

参考例句：

• Doctors work excessive unpaid overtime.医生过度加班却无报酬。
• He's doing a month's unpaid work experience with an engineering firm.他正在一家工程公司无偿工作一个月以获得工作经验。

10 mentor   

n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导

参考例句：

• He fed on the great ideas of his mentor.他以他导师的伟大思想为支撑。
• He had mentored scores of younger doctors.他指导过许多更年轻的医生。

11 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

12 batch   

n.一批(组，群)；一批生产量

参考例句：

• The first batch of cakes was burnt.第一炉蛋糕烤焦了。
• I have a batch of letters to answer.我有一批信要回复。

13 awesome   

adj.令人惊叹的，难得吓人的，很好的

参考例句：

• The church in Ireland has always exercised an awesome power.爱尔兰的教堂一直掌握着令人敬畏的权力。
• That new white convertible is totally awesome.那辆新的白色折篷汽车简直棒极了.

14 inviting   

adj.诱人的，引人注目的

参考例句：

• An inviting smell of coffee wafted into the room.一股诱人的咖啡香味飘进了房间。
• The kitchen smelled warm and inviting and blessedly familiar.这间厨房的味道温暖诱人，使人感到亲切温馨。

15 flip   

vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的

参考例句：

• I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
• Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。