Sweat and Domestic Politics

The tall grass stings my legs like dozens of small, angry, invisible bees. I am reclaiming a 200-yard stretch of two-line electric fence that temporarily subdivides our eight-acre bottom field into two-acre parcels. Overhead, the large transmission lines that cut across our farm release enough ambient electricity to create a mild, stinging current between the grass and my bare legs.

Each week our sheep graze the new grass of one of the smaller parcels before we rotate them to the next. Each previous parcel lies in distinct states of regrowth, like snapshots between haircuts taken over a period of time. On this hot, humid afternoon, the sheep have retired to the barn panting as I, their obliging servant, walk the line with a large reel, cranking the handle slowly as I rewind the braided wire.

This job is necessary but tedious. I turn the crank and turn the crank and turn the crank and then, stooping, unhook the wire from each of the 50 plastic posts aligned across the pasture. The first strand collected, I turn back and begin reeling in the second strand, eventually returning to the starting point. Where, the task completed, so is my day. Lathered in sweat, I trudge back up the hill to the barn and put the wire away.

Earlier in the day had found me spending a couple of hours in the hoop-house. Swigging water from a large jug every 15 minutes, the greenhouse temperature at 100-plus degrees, I prepared three new beds for the next rotation of vegetables.

We use a micro-irrigation system to water the hoop-house gardens. The drip lines are connected to a four-cistern setup that harvests rainwater from our hay-barn roof. A one-hour pumping into the vegetables depletes the water in the cisterns by a third. We water every five days, giving us a 15-day supply of water. That gives us pretty decent odds that a good rain will replenish the coffers. But, in the event of a drought, we also have an underground line fed by our well from which we can water the livestock and the plants.

Returning to the house after reeling in the wire, I settle in on the front porch with a well-deserved end-of-the-day beer to watch the late evening moving in. Out in the bee yard, Cindy has been adding a super to one of the hives. As I watch her walk back up the drive, her face red and her bee suit drenched, I imagine that in this heat, working in the bee yard is much like working in the hot hoop-house.

I sit in my Adirondack chair, beer in hand, and I eye her warily as she approaches. She lingers with purpose at the top of the steps, clearly preparing to alter the course of my idyll. Because, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a cold beer must be in want of a task.

Sure enough, on queue, she channels her inner Jane Austen and says, “if you have a minute…”

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Reading this weekend: The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees, by Robert Penn