My friend Amber who writes at her blog The Wild Garden, wrote the other day about her daily summer schedule. She talked about working outside on those hot sunny days and inside on the rainy ones, allowing the weather to dictate rather than trying to apply an artificial schedule. I think that has a lovely ring to it, though I couldn’t apply it wholly to our life here as farming is a bit of a rain or shine business, I really do feel that I’d like to have more of a natural ebb and flow over the summer months.
The last month has been so hectic my head has been spinning. What with chickens going to harvest, new chickens arriving, breeding plans for animals, gardens being planted, family visiting, house improvements, hay equipment being bought…it’s felt pretty non-stop. This weekend we were out doing chores until well after 8pm and I started the week feeling a bit on the frazzled side.
So when Stephen arrived home early from work at the same time I arrived with a new DVD for the boys from the library, it seemed the perfect time to just stop for a bit. We all sat together and watched a movie, resting and laughing, enjoying some cuddle time. When today dawned very wet and dreary (cancelling the scheduled Farm Workshop for another day) it seemed right to take a quiet day. A busy day outside had been planned so, with all that cancelled, what to do?
Well there’s the regular farm chores of course, feeding animals and checking on baby chickens throughout the day; there’s house chores and cooking and the odd bit of tidying up, but other than that…So today has been a quiet day, a day of listening to the boys discuss which Harry Potter character they like best, based on the lego book we got out of the library yesterday. A day to lie down on the sofa and rest my poorly back while reading a saucy recreation of Regency England. A day for extra cuddles and maybe even a tiny snooze in the lull of a rainy afternoon.
Tomorrow will dawn hopefully bright and we’ll begin the work of getting in the hay, hay that will feed our cows for the coming year. There’s weeding to do, matting to lay down, mulch to spread, grass to mow, plants to plant out, cheese to make, foraging to do and a million other things that weave in and out of summer days.
But not today. Today there’s the sound of the rain on the steel roof, beating a tattoo that lulls the house into sleepy quiet. There’s dashes out into the rain, work to be done as quickly as possible while the cool water splashes our faces and makes our hands slippery and wet. There’s the chance to rest, just for one day, until the sunshine beckons us out into the green again.
Emmalina and Her Unfeasibly Large Bonnet 