Remembering a Summer Spent on the Farm

I distinctly remember the summer immediately following my graduation from college. It was my first such season without academic bookends and I was hoping it would mark a restful reprieve from “real” work.

I’d had summer jobs, sure, but they were all part-time and mostly allowed me to indulge in late-night tomfoolery and noonly sleep-ins, as is the custom of youthful degenerates doing it right.

Then I graduated, and such antics came to an exhausting, screeching halt.

I recall sitting at my desk in a newsroom, having just dragged myself inside from a sweltering lunch break at a nearby park, and watching the clock tick by, despite global warming, at a glacial pace. I had to be at work—a 50 minute commute away—at 7 a.m., and found myself wondering if and how I could ever make it through an entire summer without a meaningful break and why Americans are so darn ambitious. French people take off the entire month of August, after all, and is socialism really that bad?

Such was manifested my decided distaste of summer. I adopted wholeheartedly, as I do most things he says, P.J. O’Rourke’s assessment of the season: “For everyone this side of Nome, summer vacation in the summer is like having a coffee break at 2 a.m.”

But this summer, a certain it’s-polite-not-to-ask-how-many years later, was different. I think my shrugging acceptance of the season everyone else except me has heretofore longed for finally came about through a combination of daily Mass and a can’t-beat-‘em-join-‘em attitude derived from Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence. This must-read little book instructs us, “We should avoid saying, ‘What awful heat!’ ‘What terrible cold!’ ‘What shocking weather!’ ‘Just my bad luck!’ and other expressions of the same kind which only serve to show our lack of faith and of submission to God’s will.”

Anyway. I decided truly to try to embrace the Northeastern Summer of 2019 and all the “awful heat,” humidity, “shocking weather,” bug bites, sunburns, awkward weddings, flip flops, oppressive overgrowth, and deafening racket of cicadas that came with it.

My first clear memory of June begins with a seminar on how to forage for wild mushrooms. Things became very agrarian from there.

A friend and I planted a garden. It’s mostly heirloom tomatoes with one very aggressive cucumber plant that has overwhelmed us. (Seriously, if anyone has a hankering for cucumbers, let me know.) One week early on, we visited our local Rural King store thrice, saw lots of Amish folk while we shopped for plants and supplies, then ran out of gas on the side of the road beside a field of cornlets. We listened to country music on the AM station in the 20-year-old Chevy truck and chatted while we waited for dusk to descend and AAA to come to our rescue. There are worse ways to pass a summer evening.

Now, nearly three months later, “Mr. Stripey” is finally making his debut. Watching him and his edible friends come to fruitful fruition with very little effort on the part of his caretakers has been very satisfying.

June also meant getting the winter wood into the woodshed. I participated in the chain-sawing, chopping, splitting, and stacking of logs just enough to savor the scent of fresh sawdust—which is the sweetest smell in all the world. Except for the fragrance of whatever feed they give the Holsteins at the Penn State University Dairy Complex.

I grew up on an historic property in Central Pennsylvania that was once, not very many years ago, a dairy farm. The outbuildings still stand in relatively good shape, and I have a romanticized notion of turning the place back into a working farm one day (if the government hasn’t completely destroyed the dairy industry by then). If I manage it, I’ll take advantage of hedonistic hipsters by hocking them outrageously overpriced milk, or with agritourism, in which I shall dupe them into paying me to do the farm chores.

So I worked every other weekend this summer at Penn State’s dairy farm to get a taste of things. This place was very large (it’s at a research university), clean, scientific, and advanced. Yet something about having liquid cow manure splattered on my face at five a.m. while “Rednecker Than You” blasted overhead in the milking parlor made it seem as down home as any rural farm in America.

But truly the aroma of the feed is what I cannot get out of my mind. The mixture of hay, ground corn, grain, sunshine, soil, hard work, and wholesomeness—it smells like how the simultaneous sipping of a hot toddy and the warm embrace of a loved one feels. I can’t quite describe it, but everyone should experience it. Just as they should experience the glory of rosy-fingered dawn at least once a month. Rising while the sun was still sleeping was painful, and taking a “lunch break” at 9:30 a.m. took some getting used to, but seeing a sunrise is always exciting, isn’t it? As if you and the Creator are in on a secret together—scheming in silence on the day’s events while everyone else in the world is barely beginning to stir.

My brief farm life also made me aware of a whole new world concealed behind towering stalks of corn and sprawling acres of crops. Lancaster Farming is an impressively comprehensive weekly newspaper covering everything from the Pennsylvania leek market to the “Monthly Bison Carcass Report.” The classified ads are the best and densest part of the publication. There you can barter geese hunting land for farm work with some good ol’ boys (sure beats city hipsters!) and buy and sell all kinds of equipment and livestock—even homing pigeons! Someone also took out a bold ad that said simply, “I BUY TRUCKER HAT COLLECTIONS.”

Of course summer isn’t summer without the incessant mowing of lawns, which brings its own familiar perfume. After weeks of managing nature, I came to the realization that there’s honest comfort in the cyclical work of the seasons. There’s a relaxing rhythm that comes from knowing the grass will need to be cut in three days’ time, the garden will need to be tended to, the cows will need to be milked, the wood chopped, and so forth.

The aspects of an existence hinged largely upon the reliable moods of Mother Nature were a main topic of the summer trap league I joined, which became a highlight of my week. Each Tuesday afternoon, I’d escape to a sportsmen’s club where time stood still. Cellphone service was nonexistent, and all the clocks on the walls told a different time…

This article was originally published by The American Conservative. Read the original piece here.