in a blue moon

It's hard to find a photo of the garden that can give her justice. She has, in the short three months of summer, become an unwieldy creature of her own creation. I wrote earlier in april of how terrifyingly intimidated I was of the garden and all she stood for.  I'm still intimidated. Just this past Wednesday Fiona found me crawling between the hedge of edamame and a row of strawberry popcorn, in ugly tears, tearing up the weeds that my vacation had allowed to come up.

I am overwhelmed by this beast but I am also in awe. She has not been blessed with a gardener that loves her or respects her. She was instead laden with one slithering, fearful wretch that ignored, sabotaged, and abused her. For the entire month of July I neither watered, weeded, nor fought off the pests that plagued her leaves and fruit. I would only creep into her paths at dusk stealing a cabbage or a handful of radishes and scurrying away before the guilt of the garden caught me.

I had managed, by some grace of God (and the healthy, friendly interference from neighbors and friends) to plant the garden after our last frost at the end of May. Rachael had come by with tomatoes. Sarah had given me kale and chard. Billy, Toby, Aunt Molly, Nick, and I seeded cucumbers, corn, beans, beets, radishes, potatoes, winter squash, carrots, lettuce, sunflowers, and edamame. After each planting I would squish up my face, shrug my shoulders, and turn by back to her thinking Well, this will never work.  

I had assumed, as the unfailing narcissist that I am, that the success of the garden would depend solely on my intervention. This I have discovered to be untrue. With the exception of my Planting of the Seeds the soil below and the skies above were all she needed. There was a week in June where I manned a vicious attack on weeds. I labored in her paths all day, every day for nearly a week until the rows were only straw and the beds were the green beginnings of plants and the dark cultivated soil around them. There were a couple spurts of concerted effort to destroy the cucumber beetles and the Japanese beetles. Both efforts (done by hand) felt chivalrous at first and then useless by the week's end.

I tried to be a better gardener. As the summer wore on I felt increasingly guilty about the way I had treated her. This would result in the aforementioned bouts of love and attention towards the garden. I found myself buoyed by the bounty she began to put forth. Proclamations of pride and plans for next year's garden have been loudly and boldly made. Two of my neighbors (unaware of my contemptible behavior) even complimented me on the "Beautiful!" vegetables.

This is all to say that the garden has humbled me with her resilience. I am emotionally wrought from the highs and lows I have had with her this summer. Albeit unwarranted, I am proud of her. I am emboldened by this season and feel a bit more prepared for the next.

Now we are in the thick of the harvest. Today is the last day of August.  A full blue moon tonight will carry us into September.  The cupboards are filling steadily with canned tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, and berries. We will spend the next month before the first frost making sure all of the hard work by the garden was not in vain. In the upcoming weeks I will be sharing some of our new favorite recipes for canning, drying, and lacto-fermenting to ensure the garden's summer ends with the dignity and respect she deserves.

An aside:  I have in the last week taken an interest in the traditional uses of capitalization and punctuation. Please, bare with me, as I am rather new to such formalities but am an eager, vicious, learner. 

and we're back.

Rudy and I are back on the farm. After a blistering 10 days of trying to relax we are back at it. It wouldn't surprise anyone (but myself) that I had a meltdown yesterday, around noon. Too much garden, home, cow drama and sheep fleece fiasco for the first day back. The table cloth was inexplicably draped over the couch in lieu of its cover. There was dried blood on the front rug. My shirts were in my pants drawer. I tried to be good humored about it all but eventually lost the cool I thought I had been perfecting.

Nick did an incredible job solo-ing the farm. But of course, I allowed the little stuff to come in and over shadow all his work.  Last night to set me right,  Fiona and I took ourselves on a sunset run where the paths through the woods became so dark I lost the trail a couple of times. The moon was so bright when we reached the big fields on the top of the mountain that we, the fields, the horses, and the surrounding hilltops were bathed in her light.

My sister is here, and so is Toby. So, while we are normally two, this week we are four. Dividing and conquering the farm. Making up for the month of August where "we" were just one.

Today we make yogurt and sun dried tomatoes and harvesting the garden that is pouring out the veggies.  Nick is in town shopping for a chest freezer as we prepare (gradually) to slaughter Ted. Then there is milking and giving the sheep choppy haircuts. They appeared to have cuddled up to the burdock while I was away.

No more kayaking across the bay with Rudy. No more sleep-ins. No more cookies for breakfast.

Vacation is over and it feels damn good to be home.

And, thank YOU so very much for every book recommendation you gave me last week. We have managed to further stave off the philistine farmer I was fearful of becoming. I have a mental stack of books a mile high next to my bedside. 

Hello decent people. I find myself on vacation. Holiday. Time off. August. The escape. Whichever you prefer to call it, I find myself there. I wouldn't say I deserve it, insomuch as anyone in these cushioned times can deserve a suspension from responsibility. But here I am with my parents, my sister, my dog and a good book (Blindness by Saramago that Ayana gave me to read over Two Years Ago). We are in, as we are every summer since I was 12, an older than stone wooden green house that sits as directly upon the St. Lawrence river as she is able. If she were to lean her aged self just a hair forward we and she and our good books would tumble into the water. Such is the proximity.

I don't return to Nick, the farm, our animals, or our garden until Monday which will make my time away from them so long that it nearly qualifies as abandonment.

As I find myself reveling in vacation I ask for your help in only one brutishly selfish way. That is for you to recommend to me a good book or two. Preferably one that has nothing at all to do with farming. I am nearly finished with Blindness and have a collection of Nora Ephron's essays to devour and then I am stranded. And because I have enjoyed this johnnycomelately foray into reading I may even deign to bring these books back to the farm and Make Room for such an indulgence in my daily life.

hubris

hu-bris (n.) 
1. excessive and overbearing pride or presumption
2. (in Greek tragedy) an excess of pride ultimately causing the transgressor's ruin

i have to say it, because the sheep, the cows, the chickens, the pigs, the cats, the dogs, and the garden are all at a collective loss for words. i am rocking the solo-farmer week. rocking it. not "rocking" per se the solo-human week.  i ate a box of mint newman os for monday's supper and a bag of potato chips for last night's.  i lobbed off 8 inches of hair mid chores on sunday because i didn't feel like brushing.  i clearly need the man back in my life who insists on basic personal hygiene and good food.

but i am rocking the farm. fixing chicken coop doors. cleaning out nest boxes. putting up dilly beans, and cornichons. schooling our bull like the little lamb he is. the house isn't a tornado. the garden is looking...better. incrementally better. i have only left the washing on the line in the rain twice. the tomato hornworms and japanese beetles have been served a serious blow. the sheep were moved and their pen for the weekend is already set up. the entire perimeter fence for the beef and dairy has been walked and checked for shorts.

i miss nick and very clearly need him here with me despite this overbearing pride of doing it alone. i have little idea of what today will bring or tomorrow or friday. i could be eating my words by the time this week is done with me.

but it feels really really good. very empowering to think, at least for a couple of hours, that i can handle this all myself.

todo

nick is away. he's gone on holiday for a week with his family. he returns next friday at which point i leave for a week with my family. before he left yesterday i managed to cry and scream and throw a Grade A tantrum. i was hungry, and exhausted, and acting out. i was calmed by nick and given a good meal and a bit of rest. it appears living with me is a bit like living with a toddler. if i had been more adult about it i would have admitted (calmly) to him that i was overwhelmed at the prospect of being solo on the farm for the next week. with so much to do, every day for the two of us, i can't imagine how i can do it as just the one.

BUT, we each need our holiday-from-the-farm. i cannot impress upon you how often i have spoken with farming couples that bemoan the realities of never leaving the farm together. ever the tag-off vacation.

so, here i am. solo farmer this week. feeling a bit more confident in my abilities and embracing the purity of a week of just me and my farm.