8 • GROWING TRUST
Mid- JuneTwice a year, on opposite points around the calendar’s circle, the perpet-
ual motion of our garden life goes quiet. One is obvious: midwinter, when
fields lie under snow. Our animals need extra care then, but any notion of
tomato is history. The other vegetal lull is in June, around Midsummer’s
Day. Seeds are in the ground if they’re going to be. Corn and beans are up,
cukes and tomatoes are blossoming. Broccoli and asparagus are harvested;
peas are winding down.
It isn’t that we walk out into the field on June 10 and say, “Wow, noth-
ing to do anymore.” There will always be more weeds. Everything could
be mulched better, fed more compost, protected better against ground-
hogs. A thriving field of vegetables is as needy as a child, and similarly, the
custodian’s job isn’t done till the goods have matured and moved out. But
you can briefl y tiptoe away from the sleeping baby. It’s going to wake up
wailing, but if you need the rest, you get while the getting is good.
We had planned our escape for late June, the one time between May
planting and September harvest when it seemed feasible to take a short
vacation from our farm. If we’d been marketing to customers or retailers,
this would still be a breakneck time of getting orders lined up and succes-
sive plantings laid out. Our farming friends all agree this is the most trying
challenge of the job: lost mobility. It’s nearly impossible to leave fi elds and
animals for just one day, let alone a week. Even raising food on our rela-