Ditzy July

It surely is Summer now, isn’t it? After a hotter than normal May, June was a blessing of cool air at night, and a slower than normal transition into our biggest push of the year. 

Well into the throes of our main growing season, I find myself in a more reflective state of mind between planting and harvesting, farmers’ markets and farm stand maintenance, canning and cooking, managing our folks on the farm, and all the other farmer-ly things I occupy myself with these days.

This is the part of the season where my focus on things external to farm life are beyond my mental capacity. My brain is tasked with functioning on a little less rest, a little more burn-out, and a cartload full of weeds to feed out to the pigs! It’s the time of year when everything catches up, I feel I’m not living in my own body, and the work I do is not mine. In a way, I am floating…. ‘Not in a tube down a river, but a mental-floating, if you will. 

It is not necessarily a bad thing for this to occur; perhaps it is a survival thing. It is one occurrence I anticipate before it arrives. I almost count down for it at this point and I warn others out of courtesy that it is on the way….

As a result, I don’t make any big decisions at this unusual time. It always feels like the right choice — to not make choices. This period used to irritate me a bit, feeling a little out of my own abilities, but I have learned to let go. I have learned to wait it out. I am surrounded by constant beauty as I live the days of it. It’s a mental retreat if you will. I have accepted this yearly experience and have fondly named it “Ditzy July” to commemorate it. 

With that now announced, the layers of nuance can be added to this writing.

This year, I lost a dear friend who left us far too soon. He was among the most important people in my life and I will forever miss his presence. I cannot even begin to describe him because he was actually that amazing. If I get started in attempting to explain him, I may never stop because I am absolutely confident there isn’t another soul in the world like him. 

I am grateful for the time I had with him over the years. I was fortunate to spend a good portion of the last decade in his presence. I will soon write my own eulogy for him just so I can recall and recount all the things he was to me and all the things he stood for. The memories keep flooding back to me with so many reminders of him, everywhere. It’s wonderful, really.  

I am also thinking he may never have belonged to himself, that he was put on this Earth to serve others; that whatever was important to his ‘special others’ was important to him. Either way, his early departure feels like the biggest cheat on the planet and I am devastated. A good lot of us are working on how to cope, but it hasn’t been easy.

What does any of this have to do with farm life?

Mostly everything. My friend was a historian of sorts. He had so many real-life stories lodged in his brain that he shared off the cuff, and appropriately so in various situations as inspiration conjured them up. His brain could stretch over the miles and make neural pathways connect that would blow minds if studied. 

My story was one of them. He knew me better than most folks know me. He cared to ask the deeper questions, understand my motivations, and studied me over the majority of my life. His words are embedded in the motions of my everyday. 

So, in Ditzy July, I spend time weeding in the gardens, filling cartloads for the pigs, staying low to the ground, studying the effects of drought on flowering times and natural selection. I attempt to read some lines in books, sometimes over and over again to let them sink in and even stick when they can, like bees to flowers, pollinating as they travel to each new destination. I plan my next big planting, in a non-committal sort of way, knowing that when August hits, I’ll finally be able to jump on the wagon again. 

And when I do, I’ll carry my friend with me in spirit, as he would have loved the wagon analogy.