Farm News, July 6, 2021. Adrian

I was looking at the calendar yesterday and noticed that the Dog Days officially began on Saturday. Caught in our frenzy of a to-do list that, aided by the right infrastructure, often transcends natural seasonal rhythms, I was surprised to see that we've already reached the commencement of this summer descriptor. But given a moment to reflect on it, things do feel like summer these days. The air is hot, thick, and buggy; an array of hot weather crops are beginning to ripen (I was just now pleasantly surprised to discover that the artichokes are beginning to form fruit and last night I noticed that the eggplant aren't too far off either); and appropriately the dogs are laying around the house, panting and bored by their heat-driven inactivity. On paper (or the whiteboard, as the case may be) this time of the year is comprised of the sum of all other seasons: we're planting and transplanting next successions and fall crops, harvesting in greater and greater volume and variety, always off to market or a delivery, dashing to keep up with the weeds and the need to irrigate between rains, even ordering more seeds which we've run out of, and somehow trying to find the time to put up enough canned and frozen food to last another year. I had been feeling that on top of all of this there was no time to live, but today I'm relieved to remember that all of this is exactly what living is.