Gardens, Chickens and Summer Projects

The gardens are all in.  Planted the corn yesterday.  The corn seed was the last to go in.  The soil was dry and warm.  I pushed each kernel into the earth with my thumb, driving it deep into the dirt and it felt like summer.  It typically does not feel this way where we live in late May.  The peas are well up, as are the greens.  Tomatoes, eggplant, all the sensitive shoots, they are in the ground too.  Sunflowers are in.  The rhubarb is already cut and will be baked into sweet crisps or pies before the end of May, at least the stalks not just eaten raw.  It is early to be so into what feel like summer.  I'll take it.


My son mows the lawn now, and it is lush and full.  He mowed before a rain yesterday.  "PGA," he said, when he finished, meaning it is pro golf perfect.  He's right.  It is beautiful and feels good under foot.  My daughter and I lay in the hammock.  It was close to eight at night.  The sky was grey with rain clouds but for a vibrant patch of blue near the mountains to the west.  It was not day, not night.  We could still see, it was light enough for that.  No bugs.  We rocked the hammock, me pushing my bare foot in the grass, she swinging her Wellington's hard back and forth, back and forth.  She snuggled her head into my shoulder.  "This is the best place to be," I said.  She hummed.

A grapple load of hardwood logs came yesterday.  Over twenty feet long, some thicker than my chainsaw can handle, it is probably seven cord of firewood.  Red Maple, Sugar Maple, Cherry.  Sweet smell and hard as rock.  If the pile doesn't roll and kill me like a bug, sawing the logs will be a welcome chore.  I'm into it already.  A month from stacked cord wood.  Best way to kill the longest days.

The power washer will be rented tomorrow.  Decks scoured, house washed and then, later this summer, painted.  Stained, really.  Barn cleaned out before end of July, which is as big a job as building a Pyramid.  Old tumbledown barn maybe stabilized by end of fall, or not, and then we pray through another winter.

Gravel to be hauled from stream to driveway to fill potholes as deep as canyons; perennial beds to be invaded and reclaimed, which will be a campaign not unlike the Russo-Turkish wars of Catherine's reign; sump pumps to replace and replumb; septic to pump (no better job than that); gardens to maintain and nurture.

A chicken coop to build; chickens to reclaim from friends, happy to host them while we regroup.  Chicks to buy to flood the flock with new blood and youth.

At the end of the season we will can tomatoes, put up root vegetables, dehydrate a ton of collards, dry herbs, cure garlic and onions, mulch everything, hunker down.

For four months though we are out there.  The house is open like a tent.  A wood fire burns out back most nights.  Friends come any time to leap into the swimming hole.  It feels we live outside.  My hands always feel like dirt.  My skin is always a bit salty and dry.  My jeans are covered in mud, 2 cycle oil, saw dust, grass stains.  I am always hungry, thirsty, busy.  What could possibly be better?


David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2012 David Rocchio