We are up at 4:30 again. I cannot say that it is getting any easier just yet. Chad arrives at 7:00 ready to roll. I finished a new Lentil, Orecchiette, and Feta Cheese salad for the picnic today, only to discover that it didn’t taste good. Experiment gone wrong. I cannot serve this to my family. Thank goodness for my friend Shelly, Chad’s wife, who taught me how to make the best Macaroni salad on short notice. After whipping it together, I go out to wash the farm truck I’ve been trying to get to for three days. I want to wash it and wax it before the sun bakes it and me. I get it washed, but it’s already to hot by the time I get to waxing so it will have to wait until this evening. Thankfully, the other truck driver does not arrive until tomorrow, so I still have time.
I am soaked by the time I have to move Chad to the field and return home to feed and water the animals and create a new mud bog for the pigs. It will be almost 90 degrees today, and by the time I start filling the new hole they are already rolling and splashing in the water covering Jack and I will mud. Thank goodness I waited to shower.
I grab a cooler and fill it with ice for the salad and fresh huckleberries for the homemade ice cream and it’s almost noon before Jack and I head out to the picnic, so we will be fashionably late at best.
The picnic was fun, but I learned that Grandma and Grandpa are putting the family home on the market and moving to an apartment in Spokane next week due to Grandpa’s cancer. I can hardly enjoy myself after Grandma asks me to run to the house with her to pick out some family heirlooms so that the kids and I will have something to remember them by. I sort slowly through the stuff, only to feel terrible for taking some and even more terrible for passing other stuff over. Grandma went outside while I was finishing only to find Jack sitting on the step moping about something. She asked him what was wrong and he said that I was taking too long and he was supposed to be in harvest. I think we already know this kid’s future.
Jack and I return home about 4:00 only to learn that one truck is broke down already so Chad had to take the unwaxed truck to the field. That is not good since it has fresh paint, but that’s harvest. It’s unpredictable, so you better have all your chores done early. I didn’t this time and I feel bad about it because the paint job is so amazing. Oh well, can’t dwell on what you missed this time of year or you’ll never get anything done.
I leave a very sleepy, but undeterred Jack with Wave and head home to make dinner. I BBQ Black Butte Porter chicken, bake diced potato with garlic and onions, some amazing oatmeal banana cookies, and a vodka tonic. Shelly came over to eat dinner with me and we got to visit minus children for the first time in history. It was strongly quiet and I could actually hear what she was saying.
Wave’s dad called from Utah, where he is competing in the National Cowboy Poetry Contest. He wanted to check on harvest and let us know that he won the championship! He is now the nations number one cowboy poet. Of course, he says it’s nothing, but we all see it differently.
Due to the truck down, Chad, Wave and Jack managed to come home in time for dinner and we all ate together – probably for the last time this summer.
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