Some stories are just too good to pass up.

By Associated Press, 06/14/02

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- A calendar featuring nude farmers armed with pitchforks, shovels and wheelbarrows is creating a stir in Swedish agriculture circles.

A national farming organization, which presented a similar, hugely successful, calendar last year, is worried that the new version made by a local group of farmers could defeat the purpose of the original calendar.

"They're surfing on our wave of success," said Ann Linden, one of the creators of the national 2002 calendar.

Linden said the first version, featuring waist-up, black-and-white photographs of nude, young farmers in farm settings, was designed to change the image of Swedish farmers as "grumpy old men with hats."

Linden said her poster boys were "attractive guys about 25-30 years old, who breed chickens, cattle or work in forestry."

The 7,000 issues of the calendar quickly sold out, with additional orders coming in from the United States and Germany, and a new calendar is planned for 2003, Linden said.

The success was not lost on a group of farmers in Rimbo, a small community about 30 miles north of the capital, Stockholm.

They decided to make their own calendar on a smaller scale, only in color and with more humor, one of the farmer models, Anders Saeterli said. The calendar will be sold at a farm fair in August.

Saeterli said he and his colleagues posed nude with coverings by a variety of farm and forestry equipment including shovels and chain saws.