Back Home by Chris Hardie
- Download this column as a Word document
- Download the photos that accompany this story
- Chris Hardie’s headshot
I woke this morning to a heavy blanket of fog and mist shrouding the valley. Soon it will burn off as we move into the heat of the day.
By the solar clock we’ve already lost nearly 50 minutes of daylight since the summer solstice, but we are entering the traditionally hottest weeks of the summer. Even though the sun has slowly retreated from its most northern point on June 21, the major heat lags by a month.
These are the Dog Days of Summer, named for the 20 days before or after the conjunction of the constellation Sirius with the sun on July 23. With a forecast calling for 100-plus heat indices, I shall be more like a whimpering puppy cowering inside the climate-controlled house rather than a ferocious, bared-teeth hound.
I can still muster up the strength and tenacity to face the heat when I need to, but to paraphrase a popular song by Bob Seger used to advertise pickups, my days of standing arrow straight with the sun upon my skin in the height of summer and never feeling stronger are as distant as the truck models from those years. I’m more of a crumbling chunk of sandstone these days.
But muster on we must, as there are plenty of summer projects and routine maintenance that needs to be done regardless of the weather.
Despite a long stretch of dry weather that required plenty of watering, our vegetable garden is doing well. After the deer ate much of the early plantings overnight, I enclosed the garden with a 6-foot high fence to give the plants a chance of survival..
Unfortunately the boss was not around during the construction and I managed to put the gate in perhaps the worst spot possible – right next to the vine crops. It’s bad enough driving through summer road construction but now we have to take a significant detour around the sprawling squash vines just to get into our own garden.
Despite my design flaw, the fresh vegetables are delicious. After seeing cucumbers the size of baseball bats (with likely a similar taste) in the store, it’s wonderful to have our own, along with beans, beets, turnips, lettuce and other goodies.
The blackberries have also started. With the dry summer we’ve had, I’m surprised we have any at all, but my determined wife Sherry has been scouting and picking on a regular basis from patches in our woods. For quality control purposes, I’ve suggested that we make sure they taste good in pies as well.
Haying memory
My recent column about putting up hay continues to bring reader responses. Among those who wrote is Bill Sayre of Jefferson, WI.
Sayre, 79, lived on his uncle’s farm when he was 13 through 15 and helped with the haying.
“We also had a hay fork, and we also carried, loaded, unloaded and stacked in the hay mow,” Sayre wrote. “We also used a blower to put hay up on top of the other loose hay. You might guess who got to be in the mow for that!”
Sayre said there is one strong memory that remains – the smell of fresh cut hay.
“I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t appreciate that smell in the summer,” Sayre wrote.
I agree with Bill and apparently so do many others. I found that there is even a cologne on the market called “Fresh Hay” that is available in cologne, perfume, spray, body lotion and in any other form.
Not sure that’s something I would wear, but it would certainly be more pleasurable than “Pits After 8 Hours in the Hay Mow.”
Chris Hardie spent more than 30 years as a reporter, editor
