After putting sheep into their new pasture and connecting the fence, I meander up to the greenhouse and the movable garden wagon. I twist the faucet and heft the hose over my right arm while I drag it to the wagon. I stand, listen to the cicadas buzz and watch the sheep graze new clover. Bronte joins me as I trudge back up the field, my boots slowing me down as I maneuver the long grasses. I stop, rest hands on hips and breathe: the air is August thick with humidity even this early in the morning. The air quality is low due to wild fires far afield making both sun and moon a haunting shade of orange. Passing the hives I squint and am able to see bees zipping in and out against the low-hanging sun. I make a mental note to extract honey this weekend.
Pushing the garden gate open I check how things are growing; broccoli is beginning to flower so I snip off the tops and crush some snails snacking on tender leaves. I carefully break off wide green and narrow purple leaves of kale, each spine delicate as a vein. I stand for a moment and fan myself with the largest. Potato plants are still strong and green indicating they would like to stay put for a bit. I crawl around the base of the bean stalks looking for skinny beans dangling like icicles from a Christmas tree. Our rhubarb plants, big again. even though I have been pulling stalks all summer. I’ll tuck a pile, like logs for our fire, under my arm and will later make compote to stack in our lower freezer. Long after the grass has whitened I will pull some out and we’ll spoon it over yogurt and taste summer.
The ground in front of the beans is turned and unsettled: all that is left from pulling unwilling garlic bulbs from their cool, dark beds. Yesterday browning stalks waved in the wind, today there is nothing left allowing more sun on our lanky corn with its soft infantile tufts. In our hay storage area one hundred and sixty bulbs of Music garlic, looking like bleached femur bones, rest on a thick metal screen, a fan blowing across them to hasten the hardening.
Driving the dirt roads of our farm there are piles of wood in various states of splitting. The hum of the wood splitter the is background music to our days. We watch the shed begin to fill. Summer, again one long preparation for winter. August is the beginning of the harvest. The time when more is coming out than going in. My head feels heavy with humidity and increasing mental notes.
Our young pup, Seamus, grows long legged and into our routines. We’ve forgotten how much work a puppy can be. We incorporate him into all farm chores: I watch as he races in circles round the raspberries where Paul is picking. Standing at the fence, he torments the chickens by mashing his face into the wire then jumping back, surprised at its resistance. We’ve also forgotten how much joy a puppy brings. In bed we share Seamus’s antics and laugh, much like when the boys were small and wrestled like puppies.
I don’t get along with humidity. I grumble as I sweat my way up the road each evening trailed by quiet sheep and relentless deer flies. The days not ever long enough to finish all things needing doing. We fall into bed each night and stumble out each morning. The push is the harvest, the harvest the push.
Last week I pulled weeds from my flower bed, sweat running down my forehead as I yanked: the small prickers irritating the skin on my forearms. I pull off one glove to scratch and swear. The rusted red wheel barrow filled, I push it across the road to our woods and begin emptying, my brain in free-fall, thinking of the next thing needing doing. Suddenly the song of a Hermit Thrush rings out from the deep woods, as clear and calm as a bell in winter. I straighten up and lift my face to the music. For a moment everything stops swirling and there is beautiful focus. Each summer the Thrush are here, calling to each other from the cool darkness of the forest, offering solace, but this summer had been too busy to stop and listen. In this moment of chaos the offering broke through and I am reminded.
This song isn’t new or a surprise: the call of the Thrush is always available. It is me who has been busy, tired, frantic and not available.