Summer Solstice

Ah the summer solstice – that wonderful time of year when the bounty of the land lays before us in tidy rows, without disease or pest, just waiting to be plucked from the earth with grateful hand. Of course, leave it to the Penn State extension service to send helpful updates of looming pestilence. Waiting in the wings to take center stage against a verdant backdrop are corn borer, bean beetle, late blight, early blight, fusarium, downy mildew, powdery mildew, and my favorite, the spotted winged drosophila. But for now, all is silent on the front of nature’s campaign to bring humility to farming hubris. We could let our guard down slightly to breath in the scent of freshly mown hay and gaze in pride at perfectly hilled potatoes, but there is one blight that knows no season and which cannot be predicted through scientific sampling – and that is human stupidity. Eternal vigilance is necessary to thwart this beast, but eventually it will rear it’s ugly head just when you thought you had a perfect day. It rarely strikes twice in exactly the same manner. One day it could be a two year old bed of rosemary ripped from the ground, the next day it could be the industrious dismantling of a chicken coop. (Really, this happened to me about twenty years ago after I instructed two young workers to take down a fence. They worked really hard at smashing a movable coop apart with a sledge hammer, and I paid them for the privilege.) Patience and careful instruction cannot mitigate the propensity for boneheadedness. All I can do is hide my tools, speak as slowly and clearly as possible in a comprehensible dialect, and hope for the best.