Today has been a day to live and die by. Got up at 5:45 and picked up my stepdaughter from work. By 8 a.m. I was in a strawberry patch sweating my family jewels tart. In one hour, Leah, my wife, and I picked 31 quarts of strawberries. We amazed the owner of the vineyard who didn’t think we could do it.

As an aside, we had driven all around Adams County, Pa. a few days ago looking for a strawberry patch that would let us pick our own. After a phone call to my wife’s father, ever the resourceful one, we were onto a lead within 24 hours. Hence, this morning’s foray into nature’s humidifier.

After 9 a.m., when we left the patch, we drove to Gettysburg to drop Leah off at home so she can sleep through the day and go to work again tonight, then my wife and I drove to her grandmother’s house to drop off a load of berries then to Hanover, Pa. to drop off another load for her maternal grandmother and pick up the grandchildren. By the time we got back home it was after noon and the heat was reaching a fevered pitch.

The fog this morning was unbelievable. The condensation from the past two weeks of rain was rising from the ground and I could barely see the road as I drove to pick up Leah. The afternoon sun drove us crazy and to top it off my seasonal allergies have been making me nutty for two weeks. In Texas, the allergies always hit me earlier, but the Locust trees and the rain at this time of year, with its accompanying tree mold, is what gets me. And all of that added to the children being antsy due to being at our house instead of with their mother and being affected by the heat, well, it’s been a doggone misery of a day.

Ah! Except the beer.

I brew at home and today I started my first summer batch. Last year was my first batch ever and we enjoyed a good party after an initial success story. This year I went with a honey-flavored ale.

I started by washing and sanitizing all of my equipment because I haven’t used it since last year (for financial reasons we didn’t brew in the winter). Then I boiled the brew and prepared it for fermenting. After the boiling, I set my boiling pot on my patio and drove to East Berlin (about a 10 min. drive) and picked up some ice to help with the cooling down. The beer is supposed to be below 80 degrees before I add the yeast and begin to ferment it. I finished the process and cleaned all of my equipment just as it was getting dark.

Just a few minutes ago I had a bowl of ice cream (yum yum!) that we picked up along with the ice and as I started writing this post my wife handed me a book that I had ordered – George Held’s chapbook titled W Is For War. I can hardly wait to dig into it as I’ve heard Mr. Held read and he is just fabulous. Plus, it is always good to see who is publishing the same type of material that I plan to publish as it could be a potential publisher for my own work down the road. Be on the lookout for my reaction to the chapbook in the near future. Meanwhile, have a beer and some ice cream topped with strawberries for me.