Greetings Dear Ones!

The good news about having a vocation that requires one to labor over a steam iron during a heat wave is that pretty much anything else feels cooler when you are done. It’s been a second week of grumpishness from out-of-state customers personally incensed that I do not have air-conditioning in the second-story sauna I call my shop. When I point out that the windows are nine feet high and sealed in with screens that do not open, they just stand there pop-eyed, gaping like airless fish flopping on a boat deck. The work space is the size of a galley kitchen; it’s not like a floor unit would work. “You should get one anyway and mount it high on the wall and let the cold air cascade down all over you,” says one who fancies himself an engineer. “Cold air sinks, you know.”

Between my farm and my “shop-auna” Prudence has been gloating about all the money I save not having a gym/spa membership. Who needs it? I’ve been opening my pores and enjoying all the delightful health benefits of mud baths and sweat lodges that my dear Finnish friend used to extol so highly. She’s the one who insisted it is pronounced “sow-nah” not “saw-naw.” Unfortunately, my “sow-nah” is not conveniently located near a dunking pond and my attempts to run naked down the hall and plunge into the nearest body of water, in this case a standard bathroom sink, were not met with kindness from the building management. I have had to resort to misting myself gently with the plant mister I use to dampen stubborn collars. Then I stand in front of a fan. Sometimes I wear a wet kerchief around my neck. It’s not quite the same as having a summer home on a lake but it will do.

Some customers resign themselves heroically to the heat with the typical stoicism of New Englanders, (who have learned their stoicism in bitter cold). They confide ingenious tips for cooling the room: “Open the windows all night and run the fans so that you get the room filled with Night Air. Then close it all up in the morning; trap that air and draw the shades. If you keep things dark, it will feel cooler. Try not to move around too much.”

Bless them; they are so kind! I just smile and refrain from mentioning that I am a Seamtress—a hot iron and plenty of daylight are non-negotiable in my line of work. Pretending to be nocturnal would just tempt me to read, eat cheerios, and sleep. Moving fast, however, is always strictly optional (unless of course one has inadvertently seared a bit of menopausal belly flab that somehow flopped out onto the ironing board).

“It’s not the heat, anyway,” the New Englanders sigh; “It’s the humidity.” They look upon me with sympathy and pity, which my inner damsel-in-distress relishes—she loves looking heroic and pathetic in the eyes of others, even if she has to look like something a cat spit out to do it. In the narrowed eyes of Prudence, she is a true slacker. (Prudence is the wet blanket that does not cool.)

“You would never have burned your stomach like that if it hadn’t been hanging out in the first place,” she snaps. “Let’s get back to work. Stop whimpering.”

Despite the heat, the brides keep coming for their fittings. One poor gal, whose dress has a corset back, had to endure being laced up while I watched small dots of sweat connect with larger dots and eventually become a trickle down the riverbed of her spine, the way one watches raindrops on a windshield. “Well,” she says once she is all trussed up, “I hope the wedding day is cooler. But even if it isn’t, I guess I have to take what comes from that day forward, right?”

“In sickness and in health… for richer and poorer… in heat AND humidity…” We laugh. She has a beautiful smile. She’s marrying a farmer so we chat about hay and whether or not their recently rescued donkeys would be a nice addition to her wedding festivities. “My idea is that they could wear wreaths of flowers around their necks,” she says innocently. “My idea is that they will stand around munching each other’s decorations,” I say.

It’s Hay Season. I spent the weekend chucking hay around in the barn, getting the first cutting of orchard grass stacked up for winter. Like firewood, hay warms you every time you move it. A ten-year-old, who was visiting the neighbor next door, helped me stack it. She’s from New Jersey. When I ask her if she wants to come stack hay, she wrinkles her nose and says, “what’s hay?” She sees the loaded truck and brightens visibly. “Oh! I recognize this stuff! This is like the benches we sat on when we went to a show to hear country music!” I show her how to make stairs out of it so that we can stack it to the rafters. I show her how to make a hay fort using bales like building bricks. Hay forts are one of the best things about summer as a kid. She is all charmed up about it until she realized there are spiders in the barn. Apparently, spiders are a deal breaker. I tell her she must read Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. All of the spiders here are Charlotte’s great-grandchildren.

I’ve been catching up on summer reading I should have done a long time ago, certainly before investing in cattle! There has been another young visitor to the farm recently—a six-year-old so dear to my heart! In anticipation of his coming, I bought several children’s books about life on a farm. The best one, of course, the one that interests us both immediately, is the one about “Poop on the Potato Farm—a story about using tractors, poop spreaders, semi trucks, and other farm equipment to turn poop into money.” It’s a very informative book with great pictures of machines, animals, and of course, poop. We read until page twelve, when I suddenly feel the need to pass out. Page twelve says “cows poop fifteen times a day! Just ONE cow—and I want to be clear—poops 65 pounds a DAY. That’s 12 tons a year!” Oh, dear God… there are not one but TWO of these blessed creatures in the barn. Horrified, I turn to my wee companion and say “Sixty-five pounds a day? Twelve tons a year?!?! Gus and Otie are going to bury this place in their poop! What are we going to do?” He cannot stop laughing. He thinks this is hilarious. Oh! The things we can learn from books! Who knew? We take a walk down to the barn and see the steers in their paddock, smiling, happy to see us. Within minutes, they each do one of their fifteen daily dumps.

From forty-pound bales, to fifty-pound sacks of feed, it’s staggering to realize the amount of weight-lifting the average farmer does on a daily basis, even before mucking out a hundred and twenty pounds of excrement. My eighty-one-year-old farming friend gets a call from her health care provider, who speaks to her in a very condescending tone. “Tell me, what you can do, Hon—can you climb stairs?”

“Yes,” says my friend confidently.

“Can you scrub a floor?”

“No!” barks my friend.

“Why?” asks the health care person, “Are you out of breath? No energy? Sore limbs?”

“No!” she says impatiently, “I don’t have time. I don’t give a shit about the floor. I’m a farmer, taking care of my flock of sheep. I walk two miles and do chores twice a day.”

“Oh,” says the health care person.

When my friend recounts the story to me, she says “farming is the secret to a long, strong life. Well, physically, that is. If you want to survive anything else, you need to stay in Amusement.”

Stay in Amusement.

That seems like the BEST ADVICE ever, whether one is considering having donkeys as wedding guests, suffering though hay season in a heat wave, or just finding out that your beloved “Oxy-morons” will grow up to generate nearly 24 tons of fecal matter annually.

Staying in amusement is easy when one is lucky enough to be a seamstress with fabulous customers who generate Delight faster than a bovine can turn orchard grass into fertilizer. Why, just yesterday, a man arrived in a three piece suit to have it altered.

“With this heat, I figured it was best if I changed at home,” he explains. I nod. We go into the dressing room together to look in the mirrors and do the pinning. When we are done, I say “I notice you didn’t bring any hangers. Don’t worry; just leave the suit on the chair and I’ll hang it up for you.”

“What???” he looks at me strangely.

“Just leave the suit on the chair,” I repeat.

His eyes dart from side to side, then roll upwards, towards his scalp, with a sigh of exasperation. The blank face slowly crumbles. Understanding dawns. “You didn’t bring clothes to change into, did you?” I say as gently as possible. Mutely, he shakes his head.

“Oh dear... The heat is baking all of our brains! I get it. But I need to leave the suit with me, if you want me to fix it,” I say. “It’s after five thirty and I need to get home to do chores. Can you wear it home without disturbing the pins and bring it in tomorrow morning, first thing?” He shakes his head. He can’t. He has a business meeting early in the morning. He needs the suit in three days because he is traveling for a wedding this weekend. He’s desperate.

Scene cuts to middle-aged-man sprinting to his car in his boxer shorts!

Stay in Amusement, Dear Ones! This heat will not last as long as the laughter. Thank you for your Good Work!

With SEW much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy