August Cicadas: Summer Week #10 – Wed. 8/13/25

Recently I began to notice cicadas’ throbbing coming from the trees. The sound takes me back to being a kid. It’s the kind of memory that’s not a specific event, rather a feeling, a knowing that lives in my bones. The sound of cicadas is the sound of late summer for me as a kid. It’s the sound of summer nights with nothing to do except explore. It’s the sound of hot summer sunset walks. Of being bored. The sound of early mornings bike rides, where I rode with excited anticipation (and a little dread) to check if the school class lists had been posted on the middle school doors yet. 

As a kid, cicada time was when summer had started to feel long. Where the days drew out and you started to feel bored, not knowing what to do with all the time that existed between right then and the start of school. I remember my mother saying to me, “Try to enjoy being bored. When you grow up, you won’t have time to be bored.”  This did not land well for me as a kid – I simply didn’t understand what she meant, or rather didn’t have the capacity or experience to believe her.  I certainly do now, and wow was she right. 

I appreciate having this memory of the cicadas singing when I was a kid. I find it so wild that summer used to feel long. As an adult, I marvel at just how short it is. Ten weeks. That’s it! Summer has just started rolling and it’s already 4th of July. Then I blink and it’s August and the kids are asking about back to school shopping. As my kids have gotten older, it seems summer is even shorter. Summer band practices, cross country training, and soccer practices are all starting up soon – yet another signal that summer is coming to a close. 

At the farm, we are here at the halfway mark of the veggie share already. We just completed our final greenhouse seeding last week, and most of the fall direct seeded crops, like radishes, beets, and carrots are in the ground. From this point forward we are no longer planting more, rather working to bring in everything the ground produces.

This season, the halfway mark has come up faster than ever! I think this is in part to aging (my mother says it doesn’t ease, this speeding up of time). I also think it’s because this is a particularly great season – both growing wise and especially human wise. Our crew is such an incredibly lovely group of people. They bring so much positivity to the fields and it’s such a joy to be working with them. It’s not always like this… some years the crew is made of more inexperienced members who realize right about in August that farming isn’t for them. This crew, however, is made up almost entirely of folks who’ve done this work before. They know they love it, and they bring that enthusiasm and care to the fields. 

When I was a kid, the cicadas always made me feel bittersweet. I knew the end of summer was coming, and this was both exciting and sad. I don’t feel any differently about the cicadas as an adult.  I’m excited to work in less heat, for sweatshirt mornings, and cheering for my kids on sidelines. And I’m a little sad too – I’m not quite ready for the summer and all it’s easy fresh veggies to phase into more roots that need to be baked, and on the personal side I want way more weekends to mess around in the water with my kids and adventure on bike routes and rivers with my partner. 

I’m going to do my best and embrace these last few weeks of summer – sweat it out in the corn with my crew, make lots of salsa when the heat loving tomatoes come on, and play and play with my kids before the change of fall is upon us. 

May you soak up every last drop of your summer too – let the cicadas be your reminder. 

Sincerely, 
Farmer Cassie