The Wind-Down

My eyes open and the list begins: I find myself pre-running the day. Harvest time is like having a crying baby…on an airplane. Our greenhouse has tomatoes pressing against it’s sides, like prisoners trying to escape. They climb their ropes to the ceiling and run roughshod along the floor. I carefully set one foot at a time down so as to avoid premature crushing. Some tomatoes big, like round, red softballs, others like small, juicy dangly red earrings. The earthen smell is overpowering and intoxicating. The air is damp and sultry. I stand there taking it in, feeling like I have entered a tropical vacation without leaving my field. I poke and pinch trying to determine the tomatoes readiness for sauce-making. Too hard and the sauce won’t be sweet enough, too soft and it will be spongy. I decide we need a few more days. We turn our attention to the “other” red fruit, apples. It seems the hot weather has hurried up apple production. Our tree branches arc under the heaviness. Periodically apples bounce off dry ground and roll down the hill, Seamus in hot pursuit of anything looking like a ball.

We pull our wagon, filled with wicker baskets & other sundry containers, unload them and begin gathering fruit. I pause, biting into an apple, enjoying the view across the mountainside; the air is cleared of the weight of humidity. I take a deep breath of it. The light of the sun altered from yesterday, the new angle casting long shadows of the tree trunks across the grass. They look alive, their long, muscled arms reaching as if to take hold of the sun and bite into it. New color ripples across the green mountains, like a reflection on a lake.

Paul has the cider press, red as a firetruck, in place on our deck. The steel, shiny, looks strong. Josh arrives in his truck with dogs heads sticking out the windows and ears pinned straight back in the breeze. He carries a few bushels of his apples up onto the deck to press.

We spend the afternoon cranking and pressing. The first drops of cider carry a hitchhiking yellow jacket who rides the liquid to the bottom and then darts off. We put small paper cups under the pour, toast to this year’s cider pressing and toss the sweetness back. The cider is a beautiful gold, sweet with a sharp finish.

Walking sheep to the field in the morning, the grass is wet from the new September morning fog. The Shetland wethers jump up onto the stone wall and walk, hoof over hoof, standing proud before leaping and twisting into the air, ovine-gymnasts, back onto the road. The older ewes watch, a look of weary patience on their faces. The celebration is for the cool-down and disappearance of deer flies. Their shepherd celebrates alongside them.

Heading back up the hill, Bronte beside me, I stop and pick the last of the dangling green beans and some broccolini to enjoy with our dinner. I peek under large leaves and see pale butternut squash growing. Along the fence, delicata grow long with dark green stripes. We’ll eat squash with our Thanksgiving meal this year, storing the skull-shaped butternuts in a bucket in our cool basement.

I pull a few new potatoes from their beds to go with the beans tonight. Cutting into them exposes their bright white flesh, cool under my knife.

Our freezer is beginning to fill with large jars of tomato sauce, smaller jars green with basil pesto, some sweet pickles, rhubarb compote for topping yogurt, bags stuffed with kale and just-produced applesauce sweetened with maple syrup and sprinkled with cinnamon. Our grocery store for the white months.

Seamus runs alongside Bronte as we walk to our favorite swimming spot on the Mad River. He too is changing. His legs, longer now at four months, make him faster than Bronte as they race. He looks lean, stretched out like a Slinky dog. The two break through the Japanese Knot weed and crash down onto the rocks of the beach. The water, low, is meandering rather than racing as it was this summer when we brought Michael and Emerson to swim. Paul and I sit on our towels and watch the sun flicker off the trees alongside the river, coloring everything a golden green. We talk about the possibility of this being our last swim of the season but both feel that is impossible. There should be many more weekends of picnics and swims. It turns out, there are not and we are grateful for paying attention to this, our last swim of the year. Next year Seamus will be full grown and, as it does, everything will change.

Meg and I pull on our white bee suits and I am acutely aware that we look rather like astronauts. I push my pant legs into my boots and pull my braid, and some hair, out of the Velcro of the head mask. We double check that each other is fully covered, carry the smoker and hive tools and open the electric fence around my hives. We are going to put mite treatments into the hives to prepare them for winter. I begin using my tool to disengage the propolis keeping the top board in place. Meg uses her hands to help. In what seems to be an instant, the top box flips into the air and slams upside down onto the ground. There is complete silence from both the hive and us. We look through face screens at each other and swear simultaneously. In an instant the bees rise up in a cyclonic cloud around us, the buzz so loud it vibrates. Both of us remain as calm as we can. We feel bee warnings ping off us. Backing up slowly, careful not to trip, we step out of the bee yard. Meg swats her arm and I feel bees crawling up my pant leg. Nothing to do now: I wait for the inevitable. Which comes.

Angry as they are, the bees become more concerned with their upside-down house than with us and fly back. We look at each other once again and move toward the hive. Leaning down I can hear my breath in my ears: we lift on three and flip the box back in place.

We continue putting treatment onto the frames. Our plan is to finish our hives and then head over and put treatment on Meg’s. As we wind up, Megs suggests waiting for another day to work her hive: I shake my head and tell her we need to keep the brave-train moving. She nods without a word.

One of her hives is missing a Queen and the monarchy is unhappy. We work, shoulder to shoulder, and get it done. When we pull the top of the suits off, we grin at each other. The job is finished, the hives are on the wind-down to winter, but it isn’t why we are smiling.

There is uncertainty each day: so much we can’t prepare for or even imagine. An important part of living is having the fortitude to just continue walking forward, one awkward step at a time. To remain calm in the face of the roar of a bees nest, accept the inevitable as bravely as we can and, when all is said and done, pull off our suits, whatever they may be, and laugh at it all.