Fertile Ground USA...Celebrating the people behind the plow

by Sara Franklin
Here we are in August, and all the farmers I know can barley keep their eyes open.  Despite cooler temperatures than this part of the country usually sees this time of year, there’s just something about August that has a way of exhausting the farming community. This is the time of year when many beginning farmers contemplate quitting, the time of year when farmers complain they have no lives, that they spend all their waking hours harvesting and attacking weeds, the “end of the sane farming season”, as a friend of mine put it.
    And yet, ironically enough, it’s the time of year when customers tend to get most excited about farms.  The August bounty of tomatoes, melons, corn, peaches, and zucchini seems to invoke bucolic nostalgia in even the most urban-minded souls. Perhaps it’s because August is a month of barbecues and lazy, mosquito-filled evenings, the last hurrah before vacation season ends and the chill of autumn evenings crisp the air. Whatever the reason, I find the contradiction between the mindset of farmer and customers this time of year a bit unsettling.
    This is the time of year when the cash flow is greatest for farmers, and yet, we’re at our moodiest.  Long, humid days make for grouchy crews on the farm and short tempers at home.  Dropping to sleep immediately after dinner and waking up shortly before I have to be at work is not my idea of the good life. And yet, here I am, willingly putting myself through this sapping daily grind. Are we, the farming community, crazy?
    I find that it’s only thoughts of fall, a lovely season on farms when temperatures drop, the urgency of harvesting slows a bit (note: Right now, tomatoes, zukes, cukes, and melons need to be picked every day and a half or so that fruit doesn’t rot on the vine and the plants continue to produce. As the temperatures drop and these crops peter out, the harvest become bi- or tri-weekly again, akin to the harvest schedule of the spring), and a sense of rhythm returns. All that in contrast to the chaotic rush that defines August.  
    Because of the frenetic pace of work these days, it’s likely I won’t write again until September.  By then, we at Town Farm will have a new farmers market up and running in downtown Northampton. Ah, a fresh start right after Labor Day, reminiscent of back-to-school (there will, after all, be apples at the market!), a time that never failed to excite me.  By then I might even have my feet back under me. Well, let’s not get carried away.

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