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We’re well into the harvest season, so I hope you disassembled your feederhouse drive system and inspected the variable-speed drive pulley before heading into the fields.

No, wait. That advice isn’t for Business Record readers; it’s for Successful Farming readers. Sorry; one issue of SF included “Your Combine’s 20-Point Inspection Checklist,” which got stuck in my mind as an example of truly useful journalism.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a solid, straightforward, 20-point checklist for running a business? One might say that it’s more like a 200-point checklist, but in another sense, it’s closer to zero. Every business has a unique set of worries and challenges, so it’s difficult to come up with detailed advice that suits everybody.

Manufacturing hydraulic pumps is much different from selling annuity policies, for example, if only because of the hot oil and high pressure.

Successful Farming, the venerable magazine that kept Meredith Corp. going until the publisher could jot down the name and address of every woman in America, knows that its readers have specific problems. The editors tackle those problems head-on. When combines are the subject, SF grabs its readers by their bib overalls and sends them crawling inside.

Then it tells them exactly what to do once they get in there, like “peruse the cross augers’ flighting.” See – now you’re worried about your cross augers, aren’t you?

Or if your idea of autumn involves deer hunting, you can find some quite specific advice on that, too. The Edersbow bowhunting blog has attracted more than 6,500 hits to a Web site devoted to “how to serve your bowstring.” Another item for my list of “things I never heard of,” and I’m pretty sure I took a few weeks of archery in college.

The site presents 10 still photos of the steps it takes to tune up that little center spot on a bowstring, plus a 10-minute video. If that doesn’t do the trick, you can always try throwing the arrows really hard.

And, of course, it’s also football season. But only a sap watches all of those three-yard runs for the sake of sports or entertainment; it’s really football betting season.

Gamblers have all the information they need, because statistics are available everywhere. But that’s like saying celestial mechanics is easy, because you can look up and see the stars.

Fortunately, www.bettorsworld.com offers an eight-part tutorial for beginning gamblers. Here’s some of the advice – not that you would place an illegal bet. I think the local daily paper dangles the temptation of point spreads just to help you build your character.

For “NFL, bowl games, and games between two top-25 college teams: Bet one unit on any game where your handicap disagrees with the line by at least three points. Obviously, place the bet to your advantage. If you make the Packers a 9-point favorite and the biggest discrepancy you can find is the Packers -13, bet the underdog and grab the 13 points. Similarly, if you make the Seminoles -7.5 but you can find them -4, bet them ‘Noles!”

It’s just as simple as that.

Successful Farming, Edersbow and Bettorsworld.com have the advantage of dealing with tangible items like pigs and archery bow counterweights and separated shoulders. Business articles can discuss cost-benefit analysis, but it’s a hard concept to illustrate.

In business, the problems can be like Rahm Emanuel – unique and a little scary. Making the environment more complex, anybody can start a business. In theory, you don’t even need a leather briefcase.

This means that people from different backgrounds, with different objectives, are competing against one another, which is how the battle of Gettysburg got started.

So with business, you get the unpredictability of football, the tedium of the deer stand and the worries of the harvest.

In business, as in all of these endeavors, the cold, dark days eventually end. Then comes tax season.