Don’t ask me why I love summer so much. Having
grown up on a farm and watching my dad work from sun up to sun down, and
later, doing the very thing my mother had always warned me against by
marrying a farmer who also works sun up to sun down, and for a very
large part of my life having worked alongside both of them, I should
really dread summer. But I don’t. And here are a few reasons why:
Homegrown memories:
Childhood
summers were filled to the brim from the moment the sound of the tractor
starting up underneath my bedroom window woke me, until the time my
tired head hit the pillow at night. There was work to be done and there
was no getting out of it.
A typical day included; making boxes to pack that
days vegetables in, forays to the field to load trailers, hours spent in
the packing house packing tomatoes, rubbing eggplants until they were
shiny while sitting on baskets under the buttonwood tree, and after
dinner if we chose, a long bumpy ride to the Philadelphia Market to
deliver the produce with Dad.
When Mom caught a break from her farm duties, there
was the garden to tend, baskets of lima and string beans to pick. I
somehow got out of the picking chores, but many humid afternoons were
spent shelling and snapping beans that mom would later freeze, or worse
yet, can in a hot kitchen.
There were a few breaks, now and then. A week of
Vacation Bible School, one, maybe two day trips to the shore, and our
membership to the Raccoon Valley pool gave some respite. Looking back,
it was all fun.
So I married a farmer, and in the years before
kids, worked outside the home, while being available on weekends to run
errands or work in the packing house as needed.
Once the kids came though, there were many
afternoons spent working, with a baby in the swing, trips to the market
with loads of produce, and being on call for those days when the picking
was heavy and the workers were slim.
There was payroll to do on Friday’s. And since
money was tight, my hot kitchen and a lot of hard work canned jars upon
jars of vegetables to see us through the winter. Would I change it? Not
for the world.
The kids grew. They learned to count by counting
boxes at the end of the day. They learned that families pitch in when
help is needed, and they earned and saved money that someday bought them
each a used car.
But most importantly, they learned a good strong
work ethic that carried them through college and will follow them
through their careers.
Life today doesn’t afford me much time to help out,
but I do so when needed. My farm wife duties have been reduced to an
occasional errand and Friday night payroll. I don’t can anymore, but the
dusty canning pots down in the basement call to me now and then. Maybe
someday.
In
the meantime, summers come and summers go. There may not be many more
years of farming left, and my husband says he won’t miss it at all.
But when the sound of a tractor wakes me on a lazy
Saturday morning, I pause before getting up, and silently give thanks
for the farm life that I was blessed with.
And hopefully, someday, the kids will too.
