100 Degrees and the First CSA share

It is supposed to be 100 degrees tomorrow.  Tonight I pick up the first share of the summer of the CSA we are a part of.  Why is the first share coming near the end of June, you ask?  Because we had snow and freezing temps until just about a month ago.  This land is a crazy beautiful land. 

I finished planting my bit of a garden, beet seeds and potatoes in the ground.  The peas are pushing above the earth, and I counted 95 calendula sproutlings that I have planted so far.  The well is still broken, so we've been hauling water in 5 gallon blue jugs to feed the oh so delicate (and oh so hardy) green life that faces 24 hours of light, and recently has been facing temperatures in the high 80's and early 90's.

Hauling every bit of water that I feed my plants, in blue jugs that grow heavier before they grow lighter, from the spring in Fox gives me a new appreciation for the generations of farmers and gardeners on whose abundance we humans have built so many different civilizations.  I think of pioneers in the midwest, where a well meant the difference between thriving and starvation, and where each bucket was hauled up hand over hand before a windmill was built to do the job.  When I come home to sunbaked seedlings that are beginning to wilt in onslaught of light and heat against their wee root systems despite the previous evenings watering, I start (very distantly) to feel the overwhelming sense of futility and despair of a farmer in a drought.  I think of farmers (and mothers for that matter) in places even today where running water is unknown and drinking and gardening water must be carried long distances, in buckets or atop one's head.  I think of the archtypal old lady with her herb garden, living alone on the outskirts of the village, with her little roofed well: and I imagine 70 year old arms hauling up bucket after bucket of liquid life from the depths of the earth.  So much respect. 

All in all, I am increasingly grateful for my luck and foresight to find a home with a plentiful well in light of my homesteadly gardening plans.  A friend of mine who runs a small CSA out of his garden was telling me that last week he hauled 600 gallons of water in the back of his truck because he does not have a well.  Now we just need to figure out how to fix a broken plumbing system.  Which means first learning to diagnose a broken plumbing system.