The first plum harvest of the season

 

Two days ago, August 29, I gathered the first plum harvest of the season. Having grown up on a farm, all such first-fruits of any particular type of produce are significant, especially because they provide historical reference points to be compared with those of previous years. Farming has always entailed this kind of chronography. It is a kind that often goes unrecorded, and with the passing of years they tend to blur into one another, leaving only the most remarkable times - whether remarkably late or remarkably early - as fixtures by which to measure future harvests. 

For most of my life, the first-fruits of the numerous berries and other produce which we harvest in my family have not been recorded, at least not systematically. As the climate is changing, however, these various firsts and lasts of the agrarian year take on a historical weight they did not previously have, as the old pattern is now breaking and it remains an open question whether it will be replaced by a new pattern or something more of a chaos. 

The present blogpost, therefore, is simply to provide some kind of record for the present year - if only when it comes to plums, as there have already been numerous other harvests. As a historian, I am used to wading through sources in order to create sense of the past. However, the changes of the present time also reminds me from time to time that I should also be a historian in the non-academic sense, namely a chronographer. I have tried on and off, and I know myself well enough to suspect that the present blogpost will not be the beginning of an elaborate and important historical record. But as a historian, I also know that even such glimpses as provided by one such report can have significance and value. This post, therefore, is both a celebration of the first plum harvest, and a record for comparison in later years.