June 2011
06-19-11
"Almost Summer"
"How's it going?" my friend from Maine asks.
He's in his eighth year of growing for markets and restaurants and he's had his share of ups and downs.
Three summers ago he lost his entire tomato crop to Late Blight. One year his melons failed to set fruit, at all.
Once the heaters went out and all of the lettuce in the hoop house froze.
"It's farming," he says.
In my mind I can see him smiling, looking out over the gardens and knowing that there is nothing in the world he'd rather be doing.
I do not remind him of the summer he raised pigs next to the gardens or the time he volunteered to clean all of my excess roosters from the spring hatch, showing up at my farm one morning with a cardboard box and then the look of sheer dismay when I showed him the pen of 50 roosters.
He called that night, exhausted, and I could still hear roosters crowing in the background.
It would be hard to say that he's seen it all, nowhere close, but he's seen it for sure.
As for me, I miss those summers in Maine when 90 felt like a heatwave that would end the world and June was the best time to grow lettuces.
I still remember standing in my kitchen, windows open while a cool breeze blew, canning tomatoes and playing Bela Fleck too loudly while drinking local beer.
That was August.
In Georgia it's June and the thermometer registers 100. The heat index (did we even have heat indexes in Maine?) is hovering somewhere around 108.
In the swamps just west of us, fires burn. Some of them have been burning for six weeks. The smoke drifts over in a haze that obscures fields, gardens, animals.
At Saturday's CSA pick-up, a disappointed little girl asks to see the cattle. "We think they're out there," we say, gesturing to the smokey fields. Everyone turns but we can see nothing.
It is the beginning of a difficult season here. As the temperature climbs, vegetables begin to refuse to set fruit.
The melon patch is filled with blooms, the bees lazily glide from one bright yellow offering to the next, but the vines do not set fruit.
For the second year in a row, Aunt Ruby's Green Tomato has declined producing tomatoes. "Too hot," says Aunt Ruby, "not doing it."
And so we watch, and wait.
The drought is real and very, very present.
On Wednesday, rain comes in the form of a violent, lashing storm. Winds, topping 30mph, beat at the trees, the gardens, the animals. Two inches of rain falls. It is bliss. By the weekend, any sign of moisture is gone.
We feed the last of our hay, watch the cows wander the pastures picking at this stem or that, there is nothing else.
This week, Solstice comes.
We watch the weather, count our luck, and wait.
What else is there? This is farming.