Wishing Away the Summer

The other day my mom said something pretty profound to me, when we were sitting around having a normal everyday conversation. "We have to be careful that we don't wish the summer away." So, so true. When it seems we have day, after day of heat wave, and everything is dying for a drink, it is so easy to wish for cooler days and another season. But summer only comes once a year, and no two are ever just a like. Another way to think about it, we have heat for maybe 4 months of the year. The other 8 months are either just plain cold, or a variation of cool, wet, and blah. If you're lucky May and October turn out to beautiful, but some years they're not.


In no other season can we grow food to fill the pantry, have daylight until 9:00 p.m., and be guaranteed that most local bodies of water will be warm enough to swim in. I can't get a garden ripe tomato in January, and look out the window see my flowers blooming in November. The conclusion . . . even though it's hot and humid, and kind of miserable, and spending more than an hour working outside in daylight hours leaves us sweat-drenched; it's time to savor summer. It will be gone before we know it, and next thing you know it will be 14 degrees at noon, and I'll be wishing for August.


In celebration of summer savoring here's a few peeks of summer life around the farm this week:

Black Krim tomato with the blush of ripeness. Can anyone say BLT or tomato and mozerella salad?

Yet another male animal around here declaring that he's the king of the world. We some how managed to get all toms for our meat turkeys this year, which is good because they grow bigger than hens, so more meat, but unlikely odds yet the same. Plus that means there's a whole lot of gobbling going on around here.


The other guys, they haven't got the whole crowing thing down yet. They still sound like they're making their morning calls through a kazoo.

And will constantly tell you that no matter what yummy treats you throw in their corral; the grass is always better on the other side of the fence:

Otherwise, it's just hot. Occassional storm blow things down, or knock branches lose to hang down out of the tree tops, like this walnut branch, heavy with unripe nuts.