Posted by Holly at August 5th, 2008

It is hot. The cats are barely able to move around and I would so love to help them take off their furry coats for a while. It is 95*, as I am told by the flashing temperature icon on my computer.

Jim is up in the pasture baling the hay he cut and raked in the last two days. Yesterday he came in looking like a rust man, covered by the good red dust of the fields. He always says he’s whipped when he comes in but he’s usually pretty sociable after he’s washed away the dust and revived under the shower. At least he is as long as I can get a few calories into him as soon as he does come in. He approaches snarky otherwise. It makes me remember how I was often reminded that I needed a boost when my own blood sugar dropped – “Holly,” my late husband would say, “you need to eat an apple.”

We’re blessed here with apples, peaches, plums (although only a handful this year), wild berries and, of course, all those gorgeous vegetables growing their mopsy heads in the garden. We added a few things this year: eggplant, Brussels sprouts, leeks, spinach; oh, and jack-o-lantern pumpkins that are already the size of basketballs. Those are in addition to cucumbers, squash, peas, beans, lettuce and our soul satisfying tomatoes. All those babies are out there stoking up the sunshine and daily watering. We’ve been eating out of the garden for a few weeks, now; but, I have to say, it still surprises me that it takes so long into the summer before you get anything out of the garden up here in Oregon. Oh, well, never mind. It’s all delicious when it’s ready and we’ll have lots of food we put away for the damp, grey fall and winter.

I can’t even begin to tell you what the grapes look like. It’s a jungle out there! They are, in Jim’s word, vigorous. The trellises are heavy with the weight of the vines. They all seem to have thicker vines this year than last and the leaves are big and green. The grape bunches are almost hidden in the abundance of leaves. The vineyard is like painting a bridge: as soon as you get finished at one end, it’s time to start over again. The only difference here is that it’s usually a different task you start in on. It’s daunting to me and I only occasionally help out. I can’t imagine how Jim gets out there every day to separate vines that are growing the way they want and not the way he wants, disengage their strong and resilient tendrils that seem to have personalities and mean to thwart the best intentions; how he prunes and ties and coaxes the best out of his grapes. I can’t imagine how he is going to do twice as much once the new vineyard takes hold.

I think he’s happy, though. I think he regards the heat and the sweat, the swaying energy of the tractor under him as his tools and his badges of the work he does, which is partly to feed the horses, feed us and make wonderful wine; but, also partly to protect the land and use its resources well, without depleting it. We were working on the wording for a description of our vineyard today to be used in regional marketing and he questioned a phrase I had – simple and elegant – asking if that wasn’t contradictory. I tried to explain that I thought elegance was clean, pure and simple in the sense of uncluttered, unfettered. It is exactly how I see this farming life. I see in the cycles of the year the direct results of almost every action. Here there is no time for office politics or jockeying for positions of power; here the earth determines the power and we are allowed to turn its bounty into things that nurture the body and soul.

To me, it doesn’t get much more elegant, nor is anything else as simple as that.