farm upstate

farm upstate

1. (US, euphemistic) The place an animal (or by extension, person, concept, etc) notionally goes when they are dead, used as a euphemism for a state of literal or figurative death or oblivion.
   • 2014, Clay McLeod Chapman, Academic Assassins:

     What do parents tell their kids when they have to put their pet dog down? “We had to send li'l Fido to a farm upstate, honey....” Maybe that's where I'm going. The farm upstate. “We had to send li'l Spencer to the farm upstate, honey.

   • 2019 July 1, “John Oliver dispels your happy, convenient illusions about shopping on Amazon”, in The Week, Johnsplaining:

     The convenience of online shopping is "irresistible," John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "It's frankly no wonder that e-commerce is gradually chipping away at brick-and-mortar retail sales, and it can seem like the retail jobs are shifting, too," with warehouse jobs apparently "absorbing America's lost retail employees." And that "initially sounds kind of nice," Oliver said. "It's like hearing that there's actually a farm upstate where Borders, Circuit City, and Tower Records employees can run around and be free."

   • 2019 November 22, Rosellen "Rosie" Downey, Silicon Valley Business Journal:

     The iconic palm trees that line Park Avenue in downtown San Jose are pulling up roots and moving off the street. / No, they're not going to a farm upstate or retiring to a sunny beach somewhere. They're not heading off to the wood chipper, either — they're going around the corner to a new home on Almaden Boulevard.

   • 2020 June 14, Josh Axelrod, Saeed Ahmed, “It's Flag Day. Here are some fun facts about the American flag you may not have known”, in CNN:

     Turns out Betsy Ross is the biggest lie your kindergarten teacher ever told you (except that Bubbles the class gerbil was moving to a farm upstate).