Hay Day

5July14, 9 pm

The sun is nearly set, darkness creeps into the sky, filling the once-azure canopy with midnight blue, the deepest sapphire, and I am standing in the kitchen in dusty jeans and a floury apron, the savory smell of homemade pizza wafting from the oven next to me.  Waiting for the haying crew to come in thirsty, dusty, tired, and hungry, I brew mango iced tea, shape breadsticks, and lay out enamelware plates and cloth napkins for our pending dinner.  Out beyond the wide screen door, the sound of a tractor humming a quarter mile away, makes me feel closer to my cattle-raising neighbors as they race the setting sun, too, squeezing the last bit of haymaking light from the day.

In our field, David and the girls fork stacks of dry grass into a wagon David fashioned from an old flat-bed trailer, its new wooden sides glowing in the last of the daylight. I hear the tractor purring as it passes by the house, hauling in another load of hay to be pitchforked into the waiting bay of the barn. The hay stacks in the failing light have the look of a Vincent Vang Gogh painting, romantic and natural.  We could very well be making hay with a team of horses as a tractor, and so my mind elects to imagine the humming diesel engine as a pair of Morgan horses tugging at their load.

The air has the thrill of Halloween or Thanksgiving, the sense of a playful holiday, but one celebrating gathering in as much as you can from the good earth.  We started the day at 5 am, picking Haricots Vert for our Saturday market in Beaver.  Racing the clock, I pulled onions & beets, plucked chard leaves & basil, before joining David and the girls picking beans, beans, beans.  At the last minute, 7:30 am, David took the picked produce up the hill to Soulstice, where he washed four bushels of bush beans, and two bushels of beets, before loading box after box of organic produce into the big red F-150 pickup.  The girls and I stole the last few minutes gathering up all of the tender purple French beans we could before towing the last half bushel of them up for similar treatment.  Changed out of our wet, muddy clothes. Stuffed cheese and bread in a cooler.  Filled water bottles.  Grabbed ballcaps and workgloves.  Into the loaded truck and away we went, where we sold all but a half bushel of the beans, all but a few bunches of beets and onions.  Where we shared recipes with customers.  Where we chatted about dogs, kids, planting times, where we saw familiar faces, and enjoyed the spectacularly gorgeous day.

This time of year, the earth provides so many harvests, so much food, hay, sunshine, & market conversations. Part of the trick of summer is trying to pause in my haste, to gather in the harvest of sensations, to thank God for my place in the year and the goodness around me.  Right now, I feel like I have an embarrassment of riches-- all the family working on the farm, a flood of food coming in from the garden, and the beauty of the nature in summer.  To all of this I can only say, "Thank you, God."

Wishing you a life awash in summer's riches,
 Betsy

 

Thanks for the market photos goes to blogger Rose Marie Kendall.  See her blog at 

http://localfarms-localfoods.blogspot.com/