Instinctively summer is accepted as the normal condition of the earth, winter as the abnormal. Summer is ‘the way it should be.’ It is as though our minds subconsciously returned to some tropical beginning, some summer-filled Garden of Eden. – Edwin Way Teale

The Sun

Solstice occurs on June 21 at 8:25 a.m. EDT. The Sun holds steady at its highest noontime height above the horizon (a declination of +23.26) for four days, June 19-23, after which it slowly begins to descend toward December’s winter solstice.

The Weather for the Week Ahead

The likelihood of rain diminishes this week, and the period brings at least four days that historically are favorable for field work. Chances of completely overcast conditions decline to less than 20 percent. The 16th, 17th and 18th have a very low incidence of rainfall (just 20 percent chance of showers), and chances on the 21st are only 30 percent. Temperatures are usually warm, with only 35 percent of the afternoon highs remaining below 80 degrees. Hot 90s occur at least 20 percent of the time. Lows are in the 60s the majority of nights, but nighttime 50s and 40s occur up to 40 percent of the time.

In the Field and Garden

As summer heat builds, watch for screw worm and blow fly eggs in sores or dung locks on your livestock. Timely clipping, shearing and dipping can help keep your animals from these pests as well as from ticks, lice and scab mites.

Pick summer blueberries as they darken this month. (Very often berries are fattest at full and new moon.) But don’t forget the wild mulberry and black raspberry crops. In the lawn, chinch bugs hatch; be sure to water heavily to counteract their damage. In your trees, look for tent caterpillars.

If you have livestock, consider growing dill (to increase milk yields), fennel (for fevers and constipation and all eye ailments) and anise (for digestive ailments).

Adolescent coyotes are out hunting now. Check fences, have the guard animals in place and bright night lighting. Continue to check your lambs for constipation. Castor oil and milk of magnesia are old standby remedies.

Pasture rotation, regular testing and worming are among the very best ways to fight worms in your livestock. Placing raspberries along your hedgerows offers a simple way to offer healthful browsing material for your livestock.

The high noon of the year has arrived, marked by the opening of goose molting season and the commencement of corn borer season.

When elderberry flowers turn to fruit, dig garlic before the heads break apart. Also take time to clear and reseed the early spring garden area.

Barley and honey, mixed with water and simmered for an hour, can soothe inflammations of the throat and stomach, and may reduce coughing in humans as well as in animals.

If your animals have been out in the sun for a long period of time, and they are starting to pant and are unsteady on their feet, they could have sunstroke.

The Natural Calendar

As Early Summer deepens, the days are the longest of the year, and mulberries and black raspberries are sweetest. Milkweed beetles look for milkweed flowers on the longest days; giant cecropia moths emerge. The first monarch butterfly caterpillars eat the carrot tops.

Damselflies and daddy longlegs are everywhere in brambles along the rivers when mulberries and black raspberries come in. Mosquitoes, chiggers and ticks have reached their summer strength in the deep woods. Long, black cricket hunters hunt crickets in the garden.

Two out of three parsnips, angelicas and hemlocks are going to seed. Multiflora roses and Japanese honeysuckles are dropping petals. But wingstem and tall coneflower stalks are five feet high. Virginia creeper is flowering. Canadian thistles and nodding thistles are at their best. Blackberries have set fruit. The very first trumpet vines sport bright red-orange trumpets, and the first yuccas, Deptford pink and first great mullein come into bloom.

ALMANACK LITERATURE

Getting Adjusted

By Carol Conklin, Grayling, Mich.

In our far pasture, I put our Corriedale ram, Avery, age 4.

Forgetting about the nice placid look on his face, I gingerly climbed off the tractor.

I had put my back out the day before pulling a lamb, but I proceeded to mend the fence, vowing to see a doctor the first chance I got.

While bending over to secure a hole in the fence, I was upended by a fast-moving train, or so it felt – having forgotten the adage, “Never turn your back on a ram.”

When I quit seeing stars and my husband came running to see if I was still alive, I stood up to find that Avery had hit me in the exact place to adjust my back.

So, no need to see a doctor!

Avery received extra grain, and I relearned a valuable lesson.

Follow the summer with Bill Felker’s A Daybook for June in Yellow Springs, Ohio. These daybooks contain all the nature notes used to create Poor Will’s Almanack. Order yours from Amazon.