Summer seen(s)

© harrington

Welcome! Today we picked up our first Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share from the WEI farm at Amador Hill. Lots of greens, some brilliantly red beets and, for the third out of three times, I got turned around (I don't get lost) on my way there. Chisago County does some interesting things with their road names and road sign alignments in the northern part of the county. One of the reasons I'm picking up the weekly CSA shares (and the organic cookie shares) is to use the trip as an excuse to get out and explore and see what's changed since the prior week. That also means that getting turned around becomes an excuse for further exploration, not aggravation. This trip I learned that Sunrise, Minnesota is the home of "world famous actor, Richard Widmark." Who knew? I also noticed that while some of the fields of corn may be knee-high by the Fourth of July, others look like they won't be knee-high by July Fourth next year. Quite a few folks seem to have hit an early season window of opportunity for timely planting that others missed. The few soy bean fields I saw were barely ankle high. Purple vetch is coming into bloom more and more. One farmer was getting what I presume is his first cutting of hay. The Sunrise River is flowing what looks to be bank full. In the middle of a sunny afternoon, there were three separate does (or one very, very fast doe) standing in their rich Summer pelage feeding in the middle (not the edges) of several of the farm fields I passed. One of them was almost directly under an empty-until-November, home-built, deer stand. Their fawns were no doubt well hidden in thicker cover waiting for mom to come home. All in all, clearly Summer has arrived and is starting to settle in for a spell in My Minnesota. That makes today a good time to share this Joyce Sutphen poem from her recently published After Words.

Making Hay at Jimmy Willikee's

Because I loved the sound of his name,
and because his land was hilly (and ours
wasn't) and his place was on the other
side of town, I always wanted to help
with making hay at Jimmy Willikee's.

It was like going to the moon, somewhere
foreign, where cows had horns and church bells
rang unexpectedly over the trees.
At noon, we stopped to eat our sandwiches
and drink cold water from a mason jar --
the ice just little floating flecks of white.

I wondered why Jimmy Willikee let
us cut his hay -- wasn't hay the best thing
in the world? He must be a very rich man
(that Jimmy Willikee) to have so much
hay that he could let us come and make
it into bales that we would drive slowly

along the almost impossible road
between Jimmy Willikee's place and ours.

Thanks for listening. Stop back when you can. Rants, raves and reflections served here daily.