And so comes a summer Thursday on the farmette. Inevitably, our big stories of the day revolve around such topics as which animal did what to whom, and how one piece of machinery is useful or broken or in need of some part, with ongoing speculations about whether there are more mosquitoes (oh horror!) or bees (oh yay!) than there were yesterday, and about the rains that are needed, or that dumped too much water on everything. In other words -- we are full of farm talk. Real farm talk by two people who actually know very little about farming. Ed doesn't hesitate to insert his standard line -- "I lived on 68th street in New York City, what do I know about this stuff?!" [This always makes me smile. Can you imagine -- I used to catch the Lexington Ave subway home from school, picking it up on 68th street, just past his apartment house, every single day of my last school year in New York. It's not impossible to think that I may have bumped into him more than once. I would have been 12 or 13, he would have been 15 or 16. Obviously, we made no impression on each other.]
This morning he goes out to feed the animals (for a change) and then tells me that I forgot to move the brick, thereby leaving the cheepers trapped in the coop instead of releasing them at dawn (we have an automatic release on the coop which usually works brilliantly so that we dont have to get up to set them free). Oops.
Me, I do my lily love walk, snipping spent heads and pulling weeds and taking the occasional picture.
(from singles yesterday to triplets today)
Snapping a photo does make me feel like the life of a lily bloom (so short! just one day!) is forever on record. There is in each flower so much to love!
Then we catch Uni (one of the medium aged hens) and hose down her butt. What can I say -- it looked really dirty. And after that appetizing chore, we sit down to breakfast. Late. Close to noon. This is a new normal for us!
Afterwards, Ed returns to clearing the barn. Oh, the junk accumulated there over the years! Fencing, netting, boards, boxes. Rods, insulation, bins, wires. Junk, in my view. Ed comes out of the barn these days looking like a ditch digger or a person who navigates dust storms for all his waking hours. Filthy by anyone's standards. And because he owns only two pairs of shorts, I've had to do mini washes every couple of days. All I need is a laundry line and I'll feel myself to be a real farm Frau! (He'll say -- leave it alone. I will roll my eyes. No way is that stuff coming into our living room.)
The next big task for him is to try out the new ancient tractor that he picked up on Craigslist. He has gotten it to work now and he is eager to see if it will actually till the land out back, in between all those trees we planted. At first he didn't want to bother planting anything else there, but these days he feels committed to finding a good use of that acre of space. If it's tillable, we'll plant something. Deciding what will be a topic of conversation for many a meal to come.
For now, I keep my focus on the lilies. Snip, weed. Snip weed. With the occasional longer pause to admire what's there.
(the Big Bed is slowly filling in...)
And I am happy to give it all a pause in the afternoon. Farming, or pretend farming is great, so long as it doesn't eat up all your waking hours. Picking up Snowdrop at nature art camp offers me the break I need from dirt and bugs and weeds and spent flowers.
(At the farmhouse)
In the evening Ed and I feel we deserve a pizza. Or, that I deserve not to cook. Or that Ed deserves break from my cooking. (I'm hoping it's not that!) I still make a salad, because we are salad addicts and because we have way too many cucumbers, both from our patch and from the CSA.
I have grand plans for meals ahead, but our warm dish of the evening comes in square boxes and it's delivered and we think that this is the most luxurious thing ever!
Summer days are full of work and ideas and dirt and cool drinks. This is why we love them so much!
