August 2011
08-28-11
"Dante's Inferno"
It is hot. 08-22-11 "Antonio" 08-14-11 "The Birds and The Bees" We are in hay baling mode.
Hotter than hot.
Inferno.
This week the smoke came back. The wildfires in the swamp have rekindled and here on the farm we begin to consider that it is possible to have hell on earth.
I am not sure anything can prepare us for summer, for the true heat of summer, for the end of summer.
Sure, we sweated in June and July and early August.
Sure, we live on the coast in the South, we know what summer means.
Sure, we were anticipating the heat, dreading it.
But nothing prepared us for the way we feel this week, for this forlorn since of doom that comes at the beginning of each day.
There is the heat and the dry, parched land, and now there is the smoke too.
For us there is the frustration of being able to do nothing, less than nothing really, to cool the air, to bring relief to the animals, to believe that the end to this heat will come.
Surely the end will come, it must come.
This week was Antonio's cumpleanos.
Four years of Latin classes have done little to assist me in my communication with Antonio but we do manage a rough banter back and forth and, after three years of working side by side with him almost every day of the week, I know enough to remember his birthday.
Antonio came to work with us in the winter time. Sure, we'd had other farm help, but I am very picky about the way my gardens and produce are treated and I can be ever so slightly difficult and demanding. (Quiet in the peanut gallery!)
Antonio has a talent with plants and produce, a careful way about him that was evident almost immediately which is to say that we get along very well.
He's also one of the hardest working people I have ever met. On any given day, Antonio tasks can range from rebuilding fences to re-potting thousands of tomato plants, cleaning horse tack to harvesting produce for a five star restaurant.
All of which means that we've become friends as well as working buddies.
One afternoon as Antonio was returning to work following siesta (combining cultural traditions is a priority, especially in the summertime when temperatures reach 100 degrees by early afternoon), Antonio chanced upon the backyard swing, BA's favorite napping spot.
Unfortunately for BA, the rope which suspended her swing from the ground had given way. This became a running joke that has not seen its last laugh yet.
"Ha ha ha, Mamma sleeps (insert odd, half-listing pose) this way."
BA is Mamma. Bingo is Binga. David is Davy. My horse is "The Baby" because he's the youngster in the barn and the one always in trouble.
Antonio has lots of advice on my horse including the often repeated advice that he should learn to pull a cart because that's what horses do in Mexico.
I've tried to explain that as a well-bred and rather expensive Hanoverian, Roddy does not pull carts, is never going to pull a cart.
Antonio doesn't understand. Roddy does not work hard and, as far as Antonio can tell, is not useful. In his world, that's unacceptable.
We may disagree on Roddy, but we do not disagree on hard work, how delicious a tomato is when picked and eaten in the field, how mean the cows can be when they have new babies, or how "loca" Mamma can be when she's driving the tractor.
(Once, after being harmlessly thrown from the tractor when Mamma was in one of her "Hurry Up NOW!" modes, Antonio refused to ride on the tractor at all, choosing to walk from the back of the field instead.)
Over the years, we've had more than our share of laughs and jokes, frustrations and arguments (Antonio: You want to pick THAT? It's too small. Me: Yes. That. And I know it's small but it's for restaurants. Antonio: No good. Me: Pick it anyway. Antonio: (shakes head, proceeds to pick impossibly small kohlrabi.).
All in all, we've become great friends and comrades in the battle for growing great food and running a local, sustainable farm.
Antonio is my friend and I have no idea how we'd manage the farm without him.
In the morning, before the heat has begun (farmer joke! The heat is a constant here now) I go to the field and mow the hay.
My sweet ride is Big V, a Vermeer mower that is awesome.
We skim the ground; we zip around the fields; we lay grass over in long rows one after the other time and again until all of the field is spread out like a quilt in the sun. Then we wait. The grass turns from bright green to light green to golden hay.
As I mow, the birds come to visit.
The first of the morning are the cattle egrets: tall, thin, white birds so named because they ride on the cows' backs and pick insects.
The cattle egret arrive in a flock, maybe a hundred of them, and settle around the rows to pick for grasshoppers and crickets.
These visitors have a dance. They stand, hunched over the grass and move their white necks back and forth in a rhythm all of their own. They mesmerizer their prey before striking. I too am mesmerizer, in awe of their skill and patience.
The egrets tolerate me because I am helpful to them. I open up spaces and lay down grass so that their hunting is made easier. I am a convinced that the egrets over the years have evolved with a genetic code that tells them to follow the tractor in order to find the best bugs.
At 7am the egrets join me on my rounds. But the egrets, charming and enthralling that they are, have no staying power. By 10:30 they leave me for a quick drink at the lake and then the shade of the trees.
The brown cow birds come next. These little guys have no real sense of the tractor. Several times, before I am comfortable with them, I slam on the clutch to prevent running them over.
They are the size of a cardinal and a glistening brown that simmers in the summer sun.
The brown cow birds stand no chance with the large grasshoppers, they must settle for moths and worms, smaller delicacies that appear as the field turns from waving grass to drying hay.
My new friends stay an hour at most, foraging for a morning's breakfast before retreating to the cool(er) shade of the barns.
Then come the real hunters: Mississippi Kites.
The kites are the smallest raptors in our area. They hunt with precision flying skills that leave me staring in the sky and forgetting all about driving the tractor.
(Side note: Yes, Mom, that explains the strip of grass I missed in the middle of the field.)
These birds are awesome. They've got mad skills.
From above the tree line they can spot a bug on the ground, swoop to ground level and gather it, and then fly back into the air to eat their prey without ever landing.
I watch one who snags a length of grass in his talons along with his meal. The grass trails high into the air like the tail of a kite as the bird enjoys his lunch.
The kites stay less than an hour, eating their fill of the largest bugs the grass has to sacrifice. I finish my mowing shortly there after, completing the field alone, without bird companions, just as I began.
The bees are in their height of summer too. It is time for more bees, more bees.
Papa B and I are raising queens now. We have a queen building hive, a hive with no queen and only the eggs we provide as a means of raising a new queen.
Into dozens of queen cups, we place three day old larva, just old enough to form a queen.
With human hands we craft a cell the perfect size for a queen to be created. We give the bees all of the tools they need to create a new queen and we ask them to complete the job.
The bees are happy to comply. Over and over they turn the queen cups and larva into new queen bees. Each new queen bee will be given a new hive. We are expanding. More bees. More bees.
It is a hot, slow time of year on the farm. We complete routine duties, watch and hope for rain, and wait for a new season to begin.