Well it has been one heck of a summer so far! It seems like it has been summer since about Easter with a few (probably not more than 10) days of cooler weather. I’m not complaining. I am one of those weirdos that loves heat and humidity BUT…endless days of oven hot air with out the benefit of some cool nights is taking it’s toll on this girl. I am also one of those dying few that hate AC (I hate being closed in and not hearing nature around me). I live with a series of fans and my cats and dogs littered on the cool floors waiting for the sun to set!
This CRAZY heat is really playing with the season in so many ways. We started early with asparagus in April, strawberries in May and …the first peaches of the season off the farm on JULY 3!! I visited my friends at Hildreth’s Farm Market to pick up some delicious cherries to take to Calgary (I headed out for 2 days for the 100th anniversary celebration of Stampede!) only to see…fresh Ontario Sweet Corn…July 6th!! These are sure fire indicators that we are now a solid three weeks ahead of “normal” harvesting schedules.
The gardens at The Good Earth are a real challenge this year. I am not one to advocate watering of lawns (no amount of meagre sprinklers can do what one solid hour of rain can do to revive a lawn) but I do water my vegetable and flower gardens. I have far too much invested in them to let them dry up. Plus they provide the backdrop for our guests to enjoy. Late in June we hosted one of our “Plein Air” painting classes with Kim Rempel. Our artists were painting shasta daisies and rudbekias for goodness sake!
And I would be remiss not to update you on our wretched hens. I, unlike Kara and Dre, do NOT find them quite as cute and fascinating. We started with 6 hens (2 each of 3 varieties). They arrived on one of the most blistering days of the summer. One promptly had a coronary. Another went AWOL for 10 days after being chased by my puppy Domingo. She has since come back and joined the flock. We have these state of the art, very “Marthaesque” coops for them which we purchased at Minor Brothers BUT…these girls prefer doing chicken calisthenics and yoga throughout my garden. Despite best efforts by Kara to train them into coming home to roost in their coops, they decorate my huge blue spruce like Christmas ornaments! The end result of this all…chicken shit on my lawn, surprise run ins with the hens while I am weeding and poor egg production. Only one little brown hen plays the game as we would like it and provides us with an egg a day. Chickens-ARGH, admittedly cute in a farm-yard story book way (at least ours are pretty) but a wee bit of a project gone wrong.
Will it ever rain again? Will we have to worry about harvest? No worries. We will likely have a great vintage this year if we can manage to ward off hail storms and deluges in late August and September. As for the orchards? I hear the lovely clanking of the irrigation pipes being laid out in the peaches. The drone of the pump can’t be far off.
Ahhh…summer! I LOVE IT!