It hasn’t rained here in any significant way for weeks, maybe months. The effect is sort of Eternal Summer. It’s warm, dry, sunny, and blue-sky beautiful every day. Not beautiful in a traditionally stunning foliage-peeping-tour kind of New England way. It’s more of a languorous, dreamy, golden-grasses-waving mirage-like across-the-cornfield kind of way. Time feels suspended.

And yet it’s not. The tautness of summer has loosened a notch or two with every passing weekend, leaving just a little more room for us to breathe and stretch.

We still have a zillion eggs to gather and wash every day. There are greens to harvest every morning and seedlings in the hoophouse to transplant. The new field needs prepping for winter, and there are seemingly miles of chicken fences that need mending.

But there are pockets of time. Time we’re making the most of with some cool activities.

One Saturday we shot a video. Our friends Chris Hufstader and Katie Hutchison came to the farm and spent all day filming and recording us, the chickens, Farmer, and some delicious food, of course. They’ll edit all that into a short spot I’ll be able to post online to help promote the new book.

Last Thursday night, we took part in the Martha’s Vineyard Food and Wine Festival. The opening event was a tasting of farm food (and wine) across the street at the Ag Hall. Our charge was to make something to showcase our eggs, so I spent a couple days shopping, prepping, and cooking 12 frittatas to cut into 250 pieces. It was a fun evening and a nice off-farm outing for Green Island Farm!

I took some time to make bacon (literally) last Monday. When we got the meat from our last pig back from the butcher, I kept a pork belly (these things are huge!) out of the freezer, and then when I had a minute started reading up on how to make bacon. That led me to knocking on my neighbor Katherine Long’s door for some advice and supplies. I came home with 12 books about pigs and pork and charcuterie (among other things.) Katherine is both a former librarian and an amazing, adventuresome cook. Hence the books. The pork belly is now curing in the fridge.

The best thing, though, about shaking off our intense summer schedule, is time for walks and play. When Libby came out a few weekends back, we all took a long walk on our favorite beach on the South Shore. Then we raked piles of leaves for Libby and Farmer to roll in. And carved the little pumpkin that conveniently came right out of Libby’s garden. We made chocolate zucchini muffins at Libby’s request and ate a lot of corn on and off the cob. Libby dressed Farmer in his early Halloween costume (a cape) and chased him round and round our tiny house.

 

 

Yesterday we had Roy’s Mom and Dad and sister Nancy out to the farm for a relaxing visit. Farmer and I showed Peg and Bob the walk down to the creek and the Square Field. I made Compost Soup for lunch. (This is Libby’s name for veggie minestrone, which she actually likes, despite the epithet. She just think it looks like the contents of our little kitchen compost pail—actually the one that usually goes to the chickens, not onto the pile, since it is mostly veggie trimmings.)

Even the sun setting earlier is a bit of a relief for us. In the heat of summer, we get our best farm work done in the cool evenings, and often we are outside until 9 pm. Now we are forced inside at 6 o’clock; soon it will be 5. That means we can’t work quite as many hours in the day (though there is all that accounting to do inside!). Endless summer is nice for a while (and I’m certainly not in any rush for winter), but the solid comfort of a fine autumn day is particularly sweet.