The heat first caught up with us on the East Coast in mid-April. Five straight days of temperatures in the mid-90s broiled the broccoli, lettuce and other early, cool-season crops in greenhouses and fields alike. It was only the first of six heatwaves to sweep the area during the season.

The first heatwave struck just after Don, our 24-year-old son and partner for the last two years, left for a new job and greener pastures on an organic farm in California two months earlier than planned. “Are we having fun yet?” one of us asked as we slowly crawled the length of a 96-foot greenhouse, ripping out beds of bolted kale, endive and spinach. “I am so NOT having fun!” came the reply. “When does Angie start work?”

Angie was a seasoned farmworker. “She’s the best. I’d hire her again in a minute,” said her former boss.Then came word that Angie had decided to move to California in a few weeks when she graduated from college instead of at the end of summer.

Even Patrick announced he would only be around in June and July. His dad had a new job in Virginia. Patrick started working with us in the eighth grade. Now, he was about to graduate from high school and start college at The Citadel in South Carolina.

Daughter Ruth was working on an organic farm in Maine – with a young woman who had called about a job at our farm in March, when we thought we had more than enough help. “Are we having fun yet?” The season hadn’t even started. The mood in the truckpatch became as querulous as the weather.

Days of persistent wind sucked moisture from defenseless young seedlings. Then came a late frost, three successive days of freezing temperatures near the end of May. Finally, it rained – five inches in one afternoon. After another hot spell, it rained again – four inches in just a few hours. Torrents tore gullies through the middle of newly planted potatoes and flower beds. “Wettest drought I’ve ever seen,” everyone said.

“Are we having fun yet?”

That’s about the time we began talking back to ourselves, answering the rhetorical question with specific examples. Soon, we were laughing at ourselves. The list was titled, “You know you’re having fun as a market gardener when…

Live By It – Your super satellite dish or cable TV gives you unlimited channel choices, but you only watch one — The Weather Channel. If nothing else, it gives you something else to complain about, because the forecasts are so often wrong.

SPF 100? – You buy sun block by the gallon.

Squeaky Clean – Your Ivory soap is replaced by Lava.

Busman’s Holiday – Your idea of a day off is to attend a field day and visit another farm.

Using What You Have – You have a two-car garage. But neither your pickup truck nor your wife’s Subaru has ever seen the inside of it because the garage is filled with a walk-in cooler, a display cooler, a double stainless steel sink, 8-foot long tables and piles of Coleman coolers, produce bags, flower buckets and berry boxes.

Commercial Espionage – The only reason you visit the upscale supermarket is to check out the quality and prices of their organic produce. Well, maybe you’ll pick up a few frozen pizzas.

Hold The Lettuce – You finally go out to the diner and eat everything on the salad bar but the salad.

“Hello, Mr. George” – You know the phone numbers and take-out menus of the nearest Italian and Chinese restaurants by heart. The wait staff doesn’t even ask your name. They know you by the sound of your voice.

Banker’s Hours – Quitting time is half past dark. (So is dinnertime.)

Follower Of Fashion – The glossy, perfumed magazines that you read for marketing insight are full of ads for Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, Gucci and Versace, yet your designer wardrobe keeps filling up with Dickies, Walls and Carhartt.

Guys & Dolls – If you’re a guy, you have three day’s stubble on your chin and always seem to need a bath. If you’re a girl, you never have any fingernails and always seem to need a bath.

Read Any Good Books Lately? – Your bathroom reading basket is always topped by the latest issues of Martha Stewart Living, Growing For Market and Johnny’s.

Fingernails? What Fingernails? – You fall down laughing when a city friend talks about paying $25 to get her nails manicured once a week.

Levis Lament – You own 10 pairs of blue jeans and the knees are completely shot in each and every pair.

The Cupboard Was Bare – The family refrigerator is full to overflowing with fresh veggies – yet there is nothing to eat in the house because everything is headed for market in the morning.

Viva Norma Ray! – The United Farmworkers Union sends you a fund raising appeal. After reading about the oppressive working conditions of farmworkers — the long hours under the broiling sun, working on hands and knees, carrying heavy loads and slaving away in foul weather – you find yourself reaching for your checkbook to send in your membership dues – Then you remember that this is your farm and you’re doing this to yourself.

Gee, Thanks, Brown! – You cringe at the sight of the UPS truck coming up the driveway because you know that it is bringing more things for you to plant.

Clutter Busters – Your kitchen table, dining room table, coffee tables and night stands are constantly buried under piles of seed catalogs, boxes of seed and flats of surplus produce.

Express Delivery – It’s 10 p.m. before you have time to walk down to the mailbox to pick up the mail and newspaper – from yesterday.

Do Not Disturb! – Friends and relatives know better than to call you later than 10 p.m. And you have to remember not to call them before the sun is up.

Excuses – “Sure you can use the bathroom. Just close your eyes when you walk through the kitchen. It’s clean in the winter!”

Twinkle, Twinkle – You’re just about to fall asleep when a little voice in the back of your brain says, “Did you plug the electric fences back in?” You look out the second floor window to make sure that the three nightlights on the fences are twinkling. They’re not. So, in your underwear and bare feet, you walk out through the wet grass to the greenhouse and plug the fence charger back in.

Will The IRS Care? – His name appears in your checkbook so often during the growing season that, come tax time, it’s seriously tempting to list your chiropractor as a dependent.

Macho Gardener – You pull Canadian thistles with your bare hands.

Nothing Bugs You – “There is a tick crawling up the back of your neck,” your wife says as you sit down to dinner. She quickly clamps the tick between her thumb and forefinger, walks over to the sink, stabs it with a steak knife and calmly returns to the table.

Life Imitates Art – “It’s A Wonderful Life” may be your favorite movie, but the film that most closely reflects your daily existence during the growing season is “Groundhog Day.”

Washday Hazards – Why do I always find little pieces of drip tape in the bottom of my washing machine?

Good To The Last Drop – You may think the truck patch runs on gasoline, diesel fuel and NPK. It doesn’t. The farm and the farmer run on caffeine. That’s why you’re always running out of coffee, even though you buy it in 2.5-pound cans, and why your dozens of coffee cups are not in the cupboards but litter the fields and greenhouses and sit atop fence posts around the far corners of the farm.

Winter Hibernation – You drag yourself home from the last farmers’ market of the season and don’t clean out the van until spring.

The list goes on, and on and on, but you get the idea. Next time it all seems a bit much, try making your own list. Like us, you may just find that you’re having a whole lot more fun down on the farm than you ever thought possible.