Dreams of Summer Long-ago

In mid-June it’s hard to remember that it’s still spring. Summer doesn’t start this year until June 21^st, the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. On that day, the sun will rise in Attleboro at 5:11 a.m. and set at 8:24 p.m. giving us over fifteen hours of daylight. Six hundred miles to the west, yet in the same time zone, sunset will not occur until 9:00 p.m. Those were the long days we remember, we who grew up in the country.

School out, hay tall in the meadows and ready soon for the second cutting, fragrant with alfalfa, clover, and orchard grass. These forage crops grew lushly, soaking up sunlight for the coming winter. An ancient method of storing solar energy, the hay was harvested, dried, and stowed against the cattle’s need for sustenance in the coming short, dark, frigid, barren days of winter.

It seemed that all of our efforts were directed to preparing for winter. Corn planted, to be stored in silos. Loft filled with the aforementioned hay. Orchards in bloom, with apples and pears and cherries to come. Gardens, planted only scant weeks before, already greening with tomatoes and greens, potatoes and squash, and, our favorite, watermelon.

All this bounty to be harvested, processed, and kept in some way before the frosts came. Potatoes, carrots, and apples into the root cellar. Tomatoes, beans, and corn canned, promising savory soups to come. A lot of labor – tilling, planting, weeding, harvesting, and preserving. But the payoff was in delicious, healthy meals, even in the dark of deep winter.

But it wasn’t all work. The neighboring farm contained a large pond, ideal for a squealing bunch of kids to swim and picnic and fish and snooze upon its sunny banks. A grove of young but supple maple trees, 2-3” in diameter, provided additional entertainment. Shinny up ten or twelve feet, then begin to lean to and fro. The tree would sway and then gently droop, lowering the grinning child to the ground, and rebound when released, no worse for the wear. Luckily in those days, lawsuits were not filed at the drop of a hat, so we were welcomed on the neighboring farms.

Further fun was to be had from our old balloon-tire, single-speed bikes, which, after laboriously pedaled up the steep dirt-road hills, careened joyously down the other side, spewing gravel as we descended. Braking was optional, laughter was loud, knees sometimes skinned. It was the best entertainment that could be had (short of riding the spunky horses that the city folks boarded with us). Yes, summer in the country entailed hard work, but offered many offsetting rewards.

We learned to be self-sufficient, but learned, too, lessons of community. When a neighbor was gored by his bull, our dad milked his cows and cleaned the stalls for many weeks. Dairy cows don’t accept any excuses – they must be milked twice a day, every day. This simple act of generosity was repaid in many ways, none the least of which was a tow up the hill during “mud season,” when our car sank to its frame, and only the neighbor’s John Deere Model A had the moxie and ground clearance to yank us out of the mud.

The world is so much more complicated now. Entertainment is everywhere, always on, always demanding our attention. Twitter and Facebook and Instagram compete for our time. Our smartphones ding and ping and chime to draw our attention. The cable news networks are all ALERT ALERT ALERT, all of the time. Everything is breaking news, demanding our concern, our empathy, our energy. It is so draining.

Perhaps it’s time, this summer, to return to the old ways. Even for a single day, a single hour, disconnect, drop out, and find a fragrant hay field in which to regard clouds floating in the blue sky, and nap. Perchance to dream.

Summer is fun - but keep it safe for kids

Picnic Rock, Kennebunk River Maine c. 1900

In New England, Memorial Day weekend kicked off the unofficial start of summer this year with dismal, cold, wet conditions and two feet of snow in the mountains of Vermont.  A week later, our first official heat wave threatened with several days over 90 degrees. Our deepest quandary was when to safely retire the fleece and slickers. Such is life in the land of the lobster.

But as we more reliably glide into the embracing arms of  summertime, our thoughts turn firmly to sailing the salty reaches, picnicking the beaches, canoeing the ponds, and camping  the forests of our beautiful land. For an all too brief time, we can allow the snow blowers to gather dust.

The kids will be out on summer vacation soon and, while we want them to enjoy this interlude, as responsible parents and guardians we must care for their safety. The first step is to be forewarned with some facts.

Unfortunately, our current media structure, with ravenous cable news channels competing to fill a 24 by 7 news vacuum, has distorted our perception of threats. Hurricanes, tornadoes, child abductions, school shootings, gang wars, and terrorist bombs fill the airwaves with constantly recurring loops of carnage. We begin to feel that our kids would be safest if kept in locked dungeons. Perhaps the best advice would be to shut off the TV and consult the experts.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) annually publish tables of mortality itemizing the cause of death by age group. While not pleasant reading, these data can inform our efforts to keep our kids safe by imparting the risks arising from various sources. The first observation is that for children fourteen and under, the vast majority of non-medical deaths are accidental: that should be our focus. For 2010 (the latest year compiled), here are the top causes of accidental child mortality in decreasing order of occurrence:

1. Transportation (Automobile and other)
2. Drowning
3. Smoke, fire, flames
4. Poisoning
5. Falls 
6. Firearm discharge

Based on this, here are some recommendations for summer safety:

Transportation accidents (mostly automobile) are the leading cause of non-medical child mortality. Make sure that your younger kids are in approved safety seats and that the older ones are buckled up. Insure that this occurs in any car they might be riding in (friend, neighbor, relative). Don’t drive your kids after drinking and make sure that no one else drives them in that condition, either. This is the single most important area of child safety – be certain that you do all you can do.

Drowning is the next most frequent cause of child death. Drown-proof your kids – get them the training needed to assure water safety. Your pool should meet safety standards such as required gates and fences. Be nosy and assure that your neighbors' pools are kid-safe, too. When at the beach, an adult should constantly monitor any children in or near the water. While aboard boats, approved personal flotation devices (PFDs) should be worn. Don’t slack off – this is the second most frequent cause of childhood mortality.

Smoke and fire are the third most probable cause of death for children. Have a home fire safety plan. Practice and rehearse your evacuation plans. Smoke and carbon dioxide detectors must be operational. Again – make sure that this is true at any other home where your child may stay overnight.

The last three categories cause a much lower frequency of childhood death but cannot be neglected. Household cleansers, pesticides, and other poisons should be properly secured. Make stairs safe from falls – keep them clear of clutter and make sure that handrails are installed on both sides. Windows should be locked with screens in place. Firearms must be stored in a responsible manner, not accessible to children. As in the other categories, you should ensure that these precautions are in place anywhere your child spends time outside of your home.

Enough gloom and doom. Be sensible, but enjoy your summer. It is so brief, at least in the land of the lobster.

What I did on my summer vacation

In current times, kids are excused from school for the summer, but for what? To play Wii, spend hours on Facebook, accompany their parents to Florida, and otherwise squander their free hours away? It obviously has nothing to do with industriousness – just try to hire a generously-allowanced neighborhood kid to mow your lawn.

Not so, many years ago. In farm country, we were let out of school in early June and didn’t return till early September. In between, we certainly found some time to camp out in the woods and ride our bikes down shady lanes, but that was not the main event. No, we were let out of school to work. Whenever our own farm work was completed, we hired ourselves out to the neighbors. As the season progressed, we went from picking strawberries to harvesting raspberries, blackberries, and grapes, each in their season. The pay was minimal – a few cents per quart basket – but it added up as long hours passed in the hot sun.

But of course the main event for the older children was haying. A serious affair, for cows must survive the long, cold winter and continue to produce high quality milk throughout that dead season. The only way to ensure their health and productivity was to feed them stored sunshine in the form of hay.

There are typically three harvests of hay – roughly May, June, and July. First, tractors pull mowers through a fragrant mix of timothy, alfalfa, red clover, and birdsfoot trefoil. Then the freshly mown hay is conditioned (crimped and fluffed) to encourage drying. If the hay were baled and stored with too great a moisture content, it would be subject to spoilage, or worse, spontaneous combustion. More than a few horses have succumbed to the former (cattle are hardier) and many a barn lost to the latter.

After a few days, the hay is raked and baled into rectangular bales weighing about 75 pounds, just enough so that the older teens, mostly high school football players and wrestlers, grunted while heaving them up onto the truck. A younger kid could be put to work guiding the truck, in double-granny low, between the rows of bales as they were heaved up and stacked. No need for short legs to reach the brake, clutch, or accelerator pedals… the only requirement was to steer through the gently winding rows of bales. At the end of the field, one of the farmers or an older teen would jump into the cab to wheel the truck around and another pass would begin.

This was hot work, and the farmers took care that their charges had plentiful water, both for drinking and for pouring over glistening, sweaty faces and bare chests and backs. It was a rare pleasure when a hayfield contained an ice-cold spring, usually marked by a green thicket on a hillside, containing a small pool of brilliantly clean, frigid water burbling straight from the earth. Almost as good were the fields that bordered on a farm pond, where cannonball dives were performed amid great uproar during short breaks from the relentless, dusty bales.

When the truck was full, it was driven slowly over farm roads to a barn where it must be unloaded and stacked into a hayloft. If the crew were really lucky, the barn was built into a hillside so the truck could be backed directly into the second-story loft. This part of the operation was, if at all possible, even hotter than those preceding as the barn baked in the midday sun. But given the resilience of youth, a brief pickup basketball game often formed around a rusty hoop nailed to the barn planking after the stacking was done.

So were our summer days, such that a late supper on a wide farmhouse porch, as the gloom thickened and temperatures moderated, was treasured as much as today’s trip to an air conditioned mall on a sultry afternoon.