There’s something about this moment of the summer.
We all feel it. The farmers, the chefs, everyone who is somehow tied to the spoils of a summer season, the bounty of the field and the need to pick it, prepare it and perhaps if you’re not too tired enjoy it.
It’s endless right now. The field is literally screaming with food and flowers. The fruit hangs on the vine, daring us to pass it without picking it. The flowers are bursting with color, demanding our attention. Pick me they are all saying. Pick me or you will pay a price.
And so we pick. We pick, we pack and we deliver. And oh that delivery. The moment the baton is passed to the chef or the store owner who, in return for our drop off is now tasked with making the deliciousness that is the summer table promise a reality. We’ve done our part, we say, now you do yours.
This is late August Upstate. A frenetically beautiful time of year not for the faint of heart. The tomatoes are amazing by the way, sun-kissed, sweet and explosive, my personal favorite. And the marigolds are gorgeous. Big, bouncy blooms that we pick in heaps and dry in the basement of our stone house, a later in the year reminder of the vibrancy and joy of the past season.
That’s later in the year, mind you, for now I am being devoured by marigolds, I am swimming in a sea of orange, I am consumed with their needs. They tumble and hang on their stems, they smell divine, both earthy and vegetal, they are everything.
It seems I I never change out of my overalls and tee. My hair needs cutting, my nails are filthy and I am generally a sweaty mess. I’ve cultivated an I don’t care what I look like attitude that is pure farm in summer. I am giving myself the permission to enjoy this, the comfort that comes from feeling like you are really alive. It’s personally liberating. This is me now and I am happy with this.
Of course there’s the reward of the food and the bounty of the summer table. We eat tomatoes like there’s no tomorrow. We make pestos of all kinds, we grill, blanche, freeze, pickle and ultimately we will can because we know that at some point in January we will want more of what we can’t have.
I hate canning. I wish I didn’t. If I enjoyed canning, I’d be putting up a ton of tomatoes right now instead of writing. I’d be prepping for the winter months when a sun ripened tomato is a sweet memory and a distant promise. But it’s not my thing, so I stick with what I love and leave the other stuff to the experts.
Today is a beautiful day Upstate. We’ve had a hard summer. Mother Nature is not happy with us and she’s come down hard with her full force this past month. Not once, but twice. And we paid the price with wet fields, downed trees and a clean up bill of some proportion.
This doesn’t necessarily wrap up neatly. Some years the season gives you perfection, and more often than not it doesn’t. Here’s where we are though: tomatoes on the vine, sweet, sun-kissed and explosive and mine to pick today regardless of what happens tomorrow. Marigolds bursting orange out of field. A stone house with a basement that will smell like drying flowers the whole summer and into January.. And me, filthy and sweaty and running on fumes, still out here, because there isn't anywhere else I'd rather be.
Except, perhaps, the beach.
