46. …And Four Months Later…
Much like chicken math, farm time is REAL.
Intentions begin with lots of planning, hoping, dreaming, and preparing, and then all-of-a-sudden, it’s almost the middle of June, you’re squeezing out every ounce of daylight available (and let’s face it, early mornings, too, harvesting in the dark, bugs pinging off your face as they swirl in the meager light of the head-lamp) to race against a clock that exists in terms of “days to maturity” or the sour look on customers’ faces when they come to market expecting a product that is not quite ready [I shit you not: in early March, as in sleety cold and dark days of late winter, a guy asked me at market if I had tomatoes. Tomatoes. I was so flabbergasted that all I could muster was, “It’s March.” And really, this is a whole other problem worthy of a post on its own: the lack of connection the average American has with the food system and cycle of growth where they live. But that’s for another day, maybe mid-winter.] and I feel it. I feel deep in my bones: the race against the Earth’s tilt and rotation to eke out every molecule of sun and rain, every mineral and element in the soil until the days shorten to thin, weepy light with blasts of air so hard and flat that the only possible answer is to curl up in front of a fire beneath a blanket and cat or dog to sip hot, boozy beverages until the sun comes out again.
Whew!
In the last four months, I’ve planted just about every vegetable known to the North American palate (save kohlrabi) and have been harvesting, marketing, and expanding my operation.
Additionally, Goose, our champion little dog, was lost suddenly to cancer. Our lives are considerably less dynamic and bright in her absence. I’m tempted to eulogize that unique love between a dog and her humans, but the subject has been well-documented by writers more eloquent than I. Suffice to say, she is missed daily, and the universe keeps putting dogs into my path to taunt me (a truck parked at the Dollar General with a tailgate barely containing three husky-shepherd pups free to a good home; a stray in the middle of an empty road, making a lot of meaningful eye contact; another stray keeps walking by at market, ducking between buildings on a secret mission).
The strawberries are ripe; early spring’s radishes have been picked clean; lettuce, cabbage, arugula, and turnips are bolting; I have tomatoes almost ripe, and still have to put my eggplant and pepper starts into the ground if I could just. find. the. time. Winter squash has been planted; tarps have been placed to create stale seed beds for the pumpkins; corn is creeping up. But I don’t need to make a list of everything I’m growing! If it comes out of the ground, it is growing on the farm (again, except kohlrabi. Oh, and okra. Bad germination on those guys.)
So with life comes death, and the cycle begins again. Always a good reminder to stop, look, listen, appreciate, and repeat.