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Make hay while the sun shines.
The faint, rhythmic click-click, thump-thump, fwap-fwap drifts across the river, punctuated by distant voices shouting over the din of the machinery, as the last majestic wisps of the midsummer setting sun hang in the indigo sky. It’s after 10 pm Friday night 18 June. It’s summer solstice week and it’s haying season in the Nehalem valley. Rose and I are methodically stuffing sausage and loading the magic meat truck as Roman and Madrona shriek and run about in the cool evening pasture throwing scraps of meat to our livestock guardian dogs, Huck and Bugey. Farmers are hardworking people and take advantage of every shred of daylight making 20 hour workdays common in these northern latitudes during summer. Fortunately we make up for it in winter sometimes retiring as early as 6pm. My friend Paul is fond of saying “Work is like a gas. It expands to fill the empty space”. It’s true. The work is never done. Our new farm, nestled in the mountains above the Columbia River in Northwest Oregon is appropriately named Neverstill. That captures our lifestyle perfectly.
See you at the markets.
George
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