Auld Lang Syne

     I couldn’t help but feel a bit nostalgic and sentimental today as I looked through photographs from the past twelve months to essentially “sum up” our year.  Throughout the past year, we were met with trials and tribulations, along with some of the hardships that our forefathers found in their own farmlands and lives hundreds of years ago.  As the months ticked by the spring-time flowers withered in the summer heat, and we rapidly found our way to the back breaking laborers of the autumn harvest, before the icy cold winds of winter blew swirling snow onto the frozen pines.  The photographs over the course of the past year showed more jubilation and success than I would have ever dreamt last January, as I sat frozen on the couch watching the snow drift across the roadways, as we attempted to tackle Mother Nature. 

The year had started out as a hard winter, hard on our electric bills and bodies.  The drifts and piles of the dreaded white stuff started at only a couple inches in height the previous December, and quickly yet quietly grew throughout the next month until they were almost knee-high.  After what was already deemed a long winter, it seemed the entire populous was ready for a shorter one until Old Punxsutawney Phil climbed out of his hole, saw his shadow, and adamantly proclaimed six more weeks of winter.  From there on out, open season on the groundhog started as snowstorm after snowstorm blew in from the Mid-west and South.  It was quickly, and unfortunately, becoming one of the snowiest winters most of us could remember since our childhoods, and even the snow geese seemed to hunker down in their southern vacation grounds.   

Just as quickly as they came, the seasons’ turned.  The seeds of spring, planted in the warmth of a heat lamp in February, were beginning to show their first true leaves on the now sturdy seedlings, and the late-bloomers were easing their way through the ground.  The snow geese and tundra swans begun to move through with rapidity, and our newly adopted orange farm cat’s belly was beginning to round.  Although I had neglected to remove the snowmen from their places within our home and the evergreen boughs from the porch rail for fear a sugar snow would find itself on the horizon, my husband nudged me ahead with the coming season, and soon winter was nothing more than a memory inside our sturdy walls.  Outside, however, the effects of winter were becoming all too apparent: broken bushes and snapped pine boughs, limbs that narrowly missed the cars and some varmint that tore trails into the yard beneath the snow.  The berry bushes had bowed under the weight of their summer harvest, and rooted themselves into the lawn.  Weeds were steadily springing from the untamed upper garden that had been buried under mounds of snow all winter, and the Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage was not finding itself in the ground early enough!  It may have been nice to step into the warm 40-50° air, but the workload was beginning to feel like spring… spring cleaning that was. 

From spring, the work only grew as the days became longer and the weather rougher.  Had we lost all our senses? as the rains came pouring down, stalling our work.  It would take days for the soil to once again dry out and be ready to till.  We were clearly days behind a large farm family’s well planned garden maintenance up the way.  It seemed every child in their family was armed with a bucket or shovel, dutifully removing the lingering vegetables from an early freeze the previous fall, mulching the strawberries with straw, and helping their father push the rot-o-tiller over the land.  Do we throw up our hands now, and toss the fresh seedlings to the compost heap? 

Nope!  The blood that ran through the veins of the first settlers, our farming ancestors, and all of our other immigrant ancestors wishing for a “better life” must run through our veins as well.  We were doing poor in “keeping up with the Jones,” as they planted their hull peas, and sunk their Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage and potatoes into the ground, warmed carefully with garden black plastic.  But, we were ambitious, and our ambition was a force to be reckoned with!  The spaghetti squash, white scalloped squash, green neck pumpkins, and small fancy gourds climbed skyward as the Big Max pumpkins broke through the soil of the seed starters in the kitchen. The Big Mama and Fresh Salsa tomatoes fought for the light, while the sturdy jalapeno, Hungarian wax, Topedo Rossos and bell peppers soaked up their sun happily in their starting station.  Spring had officially sprung!

Then came transplanting the seedlings, once nestled safe inside, followed abruptly by the heat and every invasion known to man in the gardens.  One eventful morning, I discovered potato beetles on our plants (which were quickly “relocated”) and another beetle attacking the squash field.   Two days later in early June, the summer havoc was raining down upon the garden, which did not bear well for the rest of the season.  My morning trip and our evening trip to the garden appeared to be pest exterminations expeditions with Colorado potato beetles on the potatoes, striped cucumber beetles on the squash, and Mexican bean beetles on the scarlet runner beans.  And then, something ate all the leaves off of two of the broccoli plants, which was quickly followed by the staking of bar soap to deter any future varmints.  (Seriously, how’d all these things find us?!)

As the leaves of the sour cherry begun to fall, and black walnuts and chestnuts were hopefully forming above our heads in the green canopy, reality begun to hit us... hard.  Our expansive garden during the present year (because we were just that ambitious, a much kinder, but just as descriptive word, than the “crazy” that our relatives and friends were likely thinking) forced us to expand the storage for canned goods downstairs due to our already bountiful harvest by mid-summer.  The deep freeze that had been delivered the day we moved in was quickly filling up as well; which, prompted us to search for recipes to set our dehydrator to work, as I didn’t feel like decorating the sides of our house with strings of produce to dry in the sun as the settlers had.  Additionally, the burden of the thousands and thousands of weeds that crept back in during the summer heat caused us to throw our hands up in unison and swear off gardening ever again. (From the previous post, you know how well that worked). 

Throughout this second year, like our first year, we had glimpsed upon the ever-evolving countryside with continued amazement.  Chicken houses begun to rise among the once proudly planted stalks of corn as the consistent smell of hog manure wafted through the “fresh country air” along each and every twisting back country road.  Each month a few more boards fell off the old Pennsylvania barn, and as the weather chilled the icicles clung to the roof-line of the old chicken house we had turned into a wood shop as our new found farm cats ran about the yard.  Still the icy water pooled in the neighboring farm field and the Canadian geese landed on it with joyous honks, imagining it to be a well-placed pond.  Winter had officially come as the Christmas tree was drug inside, leaving behind it a trail of pine needles and sap.  We had made it.  One more year under our belts, and now another to look forward to...