Re: Beltane

On 5/3/12 12:21 AM, Ilana Halupovich wrote:
> On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:49 AM, Wayne Morrison <tewok@storm-monkeys.com
> <mailto:tewok@storm-monkeys.com>> wrote:
> >
> > > So no one here had anything to say?
> >
> > Not me. I'm too busy mourning the departure of Winter and the arrival
> > of Summer.
> >
> > Wayne
> Hear you. :-( The field behind my house is already yellow and soon
> tractors will come to remove the dry grasses to prepare for LAG BAOMER
> bonfires. Strangely enough there's still a light rain today, but it's.
> probably, the last or one of the lasts till mid September or may be even
> October. I miss summer rains. :-(
> --
> ilana

In about two months, the winter wheat, the original seeds of which were
brought here to Kansas from Russia, will turn gold and be heavy with its
grain heads, and the combines will be moving to harvest the grain. In
the meantime, the tractors will be, and have been, plowing, harrowing
and planting corn and soybeans in the empty fields. Not this few days,
at this time, because the soil is waterlogged and will compact and turn
into something like concrete if it's worked. There will be more
preparing of seedbed and planting when it dries some. After the wheat
is harvested, somewhere around the solstice, there's hope for planting
the second crop, still beans or corn, if conditions are right.
Throughout, people are working their gardens -- we don't grow many
garden vegetables commercially here. We produce some pecans, but
there's nothing to be done with them until about November. Some people
have their own fruit trees, and surpluses from them, as well as the
gardens, will go to the farmer's markets in town, sometimes directly to
smaller grocery stores. Mulberries are ripe right now, and blackberries
are blooming, but those are both basically wild crops for me -- some
people do have tame blackberries and raspberries, again, on a home
gardening scale, not commercial.

I hope that I can remember to harvest by hand some perfect whole stalks
of wheat to make wheat dollies, just before the machines get to them.
Machines are good for getting grain, but not the straw together with it
still in the head.

Farther north, they grow summer wheat, planted in the spring. We plant
in the fall, after the corn and beans have been harvested, if conditions
work out.

What I wish we could miss would be spring, summer and fall tornadoes.



--

Sibyl Smirl
mailto:polycarpa3@ckt.net
Asperges me, Domine!