The Summer Revolution
Borland, Hal
The Summer Revolution HAL BORLAND Bicentennial Summer: That's what we kept hearing it called, as though that made the days longer or the grass greener or the moon brighter. Here in lower New...
...Clothes...
...The farmer who mows his hay just in time to get it rained on overnight has his trouble cut out for him...
...Not primitive...
...People were remembering and being proud of their own past...
...Corn had to be planted...
...And elsewhere throughout the United States, the same kind of thing was going on, according to the word I got, down at the root of things, where people live...
...We have been celebrating two centuries of progress, or at least of change...
...We had no time for such nonsense...
...Bicentennial Summer or not, the seasons wouldn't wait...
...Only three really frosty nights in April...
...Ever since 1776, let's say, and even earlier than that...
...Perhaps the answer is the simple one—go back to subsistence farming...
...The winter squash will be brought in to harden off by mid-September...
...Or pride, maybe...
...Everything from Bicentennial beer mugs to Bicentennial yearbooks listing your name as "outstanding citizen" for only $10...
...But the original commission, named by President Nixon in 1966, had fallen apart during the Nixon debacle...
...They depend on their own judgment and the breaks of the weather...
...So we did the plowing...
...Another Bicentennial echo, if you are listening...
...Over in New York state, along the Hudson River, they have a different problem this year...
...Anyway, it has been a bad summer in the apple area of the East...
...Where would we get our electricity...
...Another bad summer...
...By the end of next month we should have things in hand, another summer's generosity properly taken care of...
...And we got downright fed up when the shysters got into the act, as always, with their phony gimmicks...
...So we passed the peak of the celebration, the Fourth of July, and we settled back into the routine of jobs and daily living...
...Celebrations...
...Now there is a light crop of harvestable apples, especially Mcintosh...
...There were too many apples...
...Prices fell so low that some apple growers didn't pick all their apples...
...It was a fine idea for Washington to celebrate in a big way, and for New York to have all those ships and make a great pageant of them, and for Philadelphia to make much of the ceremonies at Independence Hall...
...Hal Borland, the distinguished nature writer and conservationist, has written ten books about the western Connecticut area where he lives...
...There is a method of drying hay right in your own loft, a system of ducts and vents and a gas-flame heater...
...Why not...
...They aren't happy if they have short crops...
...We make applesauce and jelly for our own needs when apples are ripe...
...The almanac is keyed to the stars and planets, and the seasons you know and must abide by are matters of wind and weather right down here on earth...
...Just simple, back to fundamentals...
...Get back to the way a great many people lived 200 years ago...
...Here in lower New England we couldn't get excited about it when the entrepreneurs were making their big pitch last spring...
...Old trails were traveled again and marked with new markers...
...He lost not only the hay and the barn but half his dairy herd...
...If we didn't have such summers there probably wouldn't be a Bicentennial year...
...it is the way wise, successful farmers have done things ever since they cut hay with a scythe...
...But this year the weather was wrong...
...We planted the corn and the beets and the onions...
...And then it was Bicentennial summer, and it didn't seem absurd...
...He can ted it and hope the sun dries it out enough to bale and stow...
...Russia hasn't been buying American wheat and soy beans to help promote prosperity among American farmers...
...Last year, too many apples...
...And if you note a touch of cynicism creeping in, I am sorry...
...It was a good spring, an early spring...
...They grow apples over there, bushels and tons of apples...
...Spontaneous combustion had set off that damp hay, and the result was one of the most spectacular barn fires of recent years...
...It was summer, full-fledged summer, by the latter part of June...
...The early windfalls supply the wood-chucks and the deer...
...But even those plans were largely ignored in grass-roots places...
...That remarkable Fourth of July is past, something for the history books now...
...That drives prices up, but they have less to sell...
...Then things began to happen...
...We have already started the next hundred years...
...That created problems, too...
...Gasoline for the car...
...It seemed a long time since that had happened, but people weren't ashamed to be patriotic, to talk like patriots...
...Whether they knew it or not— and a surprisingly large number obviously knew—it was a celebration of Americans...
...In 1974 an entirely new commission was set up and plans were revised and simplified...
...Last year was an exceptionally good year for apples all over the East...
...They seemed to be spontaneous, and in a sense they were, for they weren't a part of a great big program dictated from Washington, or even from Hartford or Boston...
...This year, too few...
...It hadn't anything to do with politics...
...If anything, it was in defiance of politics, ignoring the whole unsavory mess of the recent past...
...That drives prices down...
...Man, not nature, observes the anniversaries...
...Bicentennial things...
...Calves were being born...
...Get a horse, a cow or a goat, a dozen hens, and ten or fifteen acres...
...And we enjoy the beauty of the trees at apple blossom time...
...of people, not of government...
...The cows had their calves, and we put the cows out on the grass the first week in May, as always...
...for an additional $5 they would throw in an engraved certificate with your name in gold, "suitable for framing...
...The way we usually do...
...But that hadn't much to do with the way to observe the Bicentennial in Flagler, Colorado, or Selma, Alabama, or Liberty, Tennessee...
...Oh, but we can't do that...
...Grow what you need to eat...
...When you live close to the land the seasons don't abide by the dates in the almanacs...
...Trees produced more branches and less fruit...
...We picked peas and had baby beets and new lettuce on June 15...
...There had been original plans that would coordinate all the local events and create, in theory at least, a vast national celebration of the nation's 200th birthday...
...That old, old aphorism, "Make hay while the sun shines," is still valid...
...He can, if he is equipped for it, chop his wet hay and put it in a silo...
...Two hundred years of starvation, or even two centuries of skimpy living, wouldn't rate national celebration...
...The summer, as I was saying, wouldn't wait or even pause for a national anniversary...
...In April there were chilling winds and high humidity, which interfered with pollination...
...Strangely enough, the same thing happens under other economic systems...
...The voices of the hawkers had begun to fade...
...And again, politics had nothing to do with the weather...
...Up here in this corner of New England we have had a hot, humid summer...
...A few years ago one of our neighbors, a young, impatient farmer, couldn't wait to finish his haying, so he put a couple of loads of damp hay in his big barn...
...It bought those products because the climate and the weather created shortages of Russian crops...
...And the same conditions seem to be true in New England orchards...
...None of the dairymen in this valley has this system...
...Out here in the hills we know this, down in the marrow of our bones, I guess, and nobody questions it...
...That sounds absolutely primitive...
...They have hot, humid summers out in Iowa, too...
...We won't do it, of course...
...Wear what you have or make your own...
...You'd travel afoot or horseback or maybe in a cart...
...If he bales it damp and puts it away in his big loft he is playing with fire, literally...
...Field corn, traditionally knee-high by the fourth of July, was at that height by the third week in June...
...Not even in this Bicentennial year...
...We don't expect to have enough good apples to stow any for the winter...
...Don't ask me what happened...
...That proves what an unsatisfactory system we have, this competitive capitalist system...
...But Jefferson and Franklin and Adams and Livingston and Sherman certainly weren't thinking of a nation of more than 220,000,000 people when they presented the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress...
...You'd do without...
...Every one of the thirty-five members either resigned or was replaced...
...Spring plowing had to be done...
...Historic missions were duplicated...
...The household arts were demonstrated with the old-time wheels and looms and kettles and spits...
...New England remembered and was proud of its own past...
...Some might call this pigheadedness, but others might call it Yankee conservatism...
...Farmers aren't happy if they and their neighbors have bountiful crops...
...For the better, presumably...
...It wasn't the parades, though most of them were worth watching, with their patriotic floats and their colonial costumes and the fifes and drums and even the Scottish pipes...
...I don't know...
...By the last week in May the grass in the meadows was right for the first cutting and our summer began with hay-making...
...It isn't simply the way Grandpa did things...
...They were thinking of freedom to do things our own way, and this is the way it has evolved...
...Youngsters danced the old folk dances to the old tunes...
...They seemed glad, at last, to find good things to say about this country...
...Copyright © 1976 by Hal Borland...
...His new book, ' 'Hal Borland's Book of Days, '' will be published by Knopf this fall...
...But it costs money, a lot of money, I am told...
...Hardly what you would call a practical purpose, but sufficient...
...Lettuce and beets and onions and beans had to be planted and tended in the kitchen garden...
...Summer is a season of hot days, which is why our crops grow the way they do...
...The freezer is full of peas and beans and carrots for winter stews...
...There was a cold spell in mid-March...
...And a few weeks later, at 2 o'clock in the morning, he was wakened by the bawling of his cattle...
...February was too warm...
...Hay was in the mow ten days early...
...Thank goodness, we can still hold conventions and at' least go through the motions of selecting candidates for the Presidency...
...Of people who 200 years ago rebelled against British rule, fought a war for independence and set up a new form of government designed to encourage decent, worthwhile lives for independent men and women...
...And in Ohio, and Missouri, and Texas, and Arizona...
...Our apple trees, which haven't produced a marketable apple in thirty years, seem to be about normal...
...Tomorrow we will start canning tomatoes for the winter...
...Or he can let it lie a few days, get mildewed before it dries, then put it away for bedding next winter...
...It's still Bicentennial summer, but we have those national conventions still screaming in our ears and drowning out too many of the hometown bands and fife and drum corps, too many of those grass-roots echoes that we heard so clearly on that Fourth of July weekend...
...Even here in the hill towns of lower New England we could hear other echoes, far older echoes, and forget the shysters who had been at us all spring...
Vol. 40 • September 1976 • No. 9
