Nourishing Bites | My July Paradox Part 1
Part 1 of 3 (Read Part 2 and Part 3)
We laid farm dog Samson to rest last week. Our special pup had a great and loving spirit and there is really no poetic way to say it.
He is dead.
I can’t begin to write the story of Samson and all the joy he brought to our lives. Brad and I always said that Sammy was meant to live on a farm. Specifically, a vegetable farm, because there wasn’t anything he liked more than to escape notice and peruse the rows of ripening produce. We quickly instituted a policy that Sam could ride in the work cart to the field, but must always have a chaperone. That’s because the first summer he lived at the farm, Brad went to harvest tomatoes one day only to find each fruit within three feet of the ground still hanging on the vines but with small teeth marks in them. Sam had meticulously tested each one, only harvesting the very few that were perfectly ripe.
Talk about eating the profits...
We had no idea what a serious connoisseur he was, but we quickly learned. Blueberries, kohlrabi, winter squash, carrots- that dog loved food more than I do- and more than any labrador I’ve ever known- which is saying a lot.
So now I find myself once again in what I call my July Paradox.
This is the month of constant expansion, hopeful energy, delicious fruition. But personally, each year when the sun is so high in the sky, so overwhelmingly bright, I feel like the soft tender soil of a fresh grave.
That’s because I also lost my brother Jack in July, sixteen years ago.
July is always a heavy lift - it’s just the way life is on a working farm.
For instance, last week we found ourselves very short handed with a field of hay baled and waiting. Because my brother spent a lot of time mowing it with the old Massey Ferguson, we call it Jack’s Field. There were just three of us, Karen, Brad and myself and we were literally 16 hours away from looming rain.
It felt daunting to say the least, but the prospect of losing (and subsequently having to buy) an entire year’s worth of hay was all the motivation we needed. I kept reminding myself, all you can do is take it bale by bale. And that is exactly what we did.
Several hours and 147 bales later, we had carried, lifted, and stacked, then transported, unloaded, and re-stacked in the barn all the hay we would need for another year. And that very night, the skies gave way. Just as these nights, my heart is pouring too.
Bale by bale. This is what farming has taught me.
It’s the same way I sow one million seeds, plant a thousand trees, dig a grave or travel with grief in my pocket. Seed by seed, shovelful by shovelful, breath by breath.
The loss of my brother, and now the loss of Samson, are hard to hold in the same breath.
But these losses? They are mine to carry, they are mine to love and cherish, mine and mine alone to claim. We cannot carry grief for others, and others cannot carry our grief for us. Just as we will hold our joys to the end of our days, our grief shall be with us too. ~AJ
Corn Picking 1956 - Afternoon Break
“My father, who ran the picker, was already sitting on the ground, leaning back against the big rear wheel of the tractor. In that spot out of the wind we ate ham sandwiches and doughnuts, and drank hot coffee from a clear Mason jar wrapped in newspaper to keep it warm. The autumn day had spilled the color gold everywhere: aspen, cornstalks, ears of corn piled high, coffee mixed with fresh cream, the fur of my dog, Boots, who was sharing our food. And when my father and I spoke, joking with the happy dog, we did not know it then, but even the words that we carelessly dropped were left to shine forever on the bottom of the clear, cold afternoon.”