Weed Eating My Way Through a Maryland Summer

My parents moved to Queenstown, Maryland about two years before I graduated. Between internships and always being busy during the summer, I never really got to spend a significant amount of time there. I'd show up for winter break, sleep in my room that still didn't quite feel like mine, and leave before the town had a chance to become anything more than my parents' new address.

I always felt more like a visitor than someone who was actually home.

The summer after graduation was supposed to go differently. I had a job lined up. It fell through. Suddenly I was in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar future, dealing with a lot more than just a job search. I wasn't sure what was going to happen next.

My mom, in classic mom fashion, posted on the local Facebook Marketplace. Something about how she had a recent college graduate at home, ready to work. She got a call back quickly: show up at our farm tomorrow at 7am. Be ready for a full day of cutting grass.

Day one

I show up and it's a ragtag team of two people. One was a guy a couple years younger than me. The other was Mum Mum.

That's what everyone called her. She was the grandma of one of the owners of the farm and the landscaping company. An older woman, but probably one of the most badass people I've come across in my life. I didn't know that yet. All I knew was that I was the new guy, and the new guy gets the weed eater, or for those unaccustomed to how grass cutting operations work, the bottom man on the totem pole.

I don't remember the rest of that first day too well. It was all a blur. One house to another, weed eating and blowing for about ten hours straight. I went home smelling like a mixture of gas, grass, and whatever else I'd come across that day. That smell would become the most familiar thing about my summer.

The reality check

The second day, we moved on to the houses with larger yards. After a couple of them, we pulled up to a property so big that I turned to Mum Mum and said:

"If you would've taken me here on the first day, I probably would've called my mom to come pick me up."

She laughed. That was the thing about Mum Mum. She'd laugh, and then tell you to keep working. Her and I developed this dynamic where we'd crack jokes at each other, bicker about nothing, argue about the best way to do something, and then get back to it. She gave me a hard time every single day and I gave it right back.

But I didn't call my mom. I grabbed the weed eater and got to work. After about an hour of wandering around this property looking for places that needed trimming, it was finally time to go. The next property was larger.

Mum Mum's work ethic was something I came to admire more than almost anything else that summer. Every single day she was out there. Never slept in. Never complained. Always ready to go. She was doing this long before I showed up and she'd be doing it long after I left.

The work

The mornings were quiet. I'd wake up around 6:30, usually racing to make it on time, coffee in one hand, food in the other. I food prepped every week. Oatmeal, eggs, breakfast burritos, a little of everything. The farm was about a five minute drive from my parents' house. Morning dew still on the grass when I pulled up.

Then the heat would build.

The Maryland summer was brutal. It would hit 100 degrees regularly. I remember the truck thermometer reading 103 one afternoon. And our ragtag crew was out there, trying our best to keep it together. We kept the truck light. Music going, someone cracking a joke, Mum Mum bickering with someone about something. That's how you survive ten hours in that heat. You don't think about the heat. You think about the next joke.

On a lighter day, we'd cut 15 to 20 lawns. On the days with bigger properties, maybe 10.

The farm

As the weather got dry and the heat slowed the grass down, the work shifted. The farm where we met every morning was owned by the same family that ran the landscaping company. One week, the owners went on vacation and put me and a high school kid who barely spoke English in charge of the whole place.

These were the projects I enjoyed the most. We were taking care of the farm that had become our home base all summer. Cutting down trees, cleaning the garden, watering plants, mowing the property, building a shed, clearing out piles of leaves. Just about everything there was to do on a piece of land, we did it.

My favorite part was the chickens. I'd sneak a couple eggs every few days for my own meals. Best eggs I've ever had. There's something about an egg from a chicken you personally took care of that a grocery store carton can never replicate.

The goats were on one of the properties we cut every other week, right along a path I'd run on. Every time I passed them, I'd make sure to stop and feed them fresh clippings or whatever was around.

The Eastern Shore

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I stopped feeling like a visitor.

The Eastern Shore has this pace to it that you either resist or give in to. I gave in. It's slow, relaxing, and has a homey quality that sneaks up on you. Down the road from our house, there's a little shed where the neighbors sell local produce. Stuff they grow, make, or procure. My favorite thing to buy there is the sourdough. I never forget to stop by when I visit home.

That's the thing. At some point that summer, I started calling it home.

The shift

About three weeks in, I'd like to think I got the hang of it. Unless you asked Mum Mum, who would've told you I still had a lot to learn. She loved that.

But something did change. Suddenly I was on the tractor, cutting lawns, striping them up, doing an okay job given that I wouldn't have known how to do any of this three weeks prior. I had some experience working outside before, but nothing like this.

My body adapted. Ten hour days fueled on Red Bull and a Wawa meatball hoagie, like it was nothing. Unless my alarm didn't go off.

One project that summer meant the world to me. I was tasked with cutting down about 20 trees, sawing them into smaller pieces, and using a tractor to haul them into piles. I said sure. Inside, I thought: how the heck am I going to do this?

After consulting a YouTube video, I figured I was ready. Started with a couple smaller ones. Got hit in the head a few times. But eventually I worked my way up to the big ones, and I got them down. Here's me taking one of them down:

That's what the summer taught me more than anything. If I just kept showing up, eventually I could figure it out. The showing up is the hardest part. But once you show up for enough days in a row, you get the hang of it. You stop being the person who would've called their mom for a ride and you start being the person who grabs the weed eater.

Moving on

As the summer wound down, business slowed. The grass wasn't growing as much and we shifted to cleanups, which were just as hard as cutting it. Eventually I found full-time employment and my last day came.

Do I miss it? Driving around the Eastern Shore, working my butt off, having a nice farmer's tan, being outside the entire summer? In the moment, I didn't think so.

But I think about that summer a lot now. More than I expected to. Not in a nostalgic, wish-I-could-go-back kind of way. When something at work feels overwhelming, or when I'm staring at a problem I don't know how to solve, some part of me is back in that truck, pulling up to a property that's way too big, and grabbing the weed eater anyway.

For those curious, yes, they did get a pizza at some point that summer. I still check in on Mum Mum and the family whenever I visit home. They're great people.

The exhaustion, the commitment to the mission, the showing up every morning whether I felt like it or not. That's the part that stuck. That's the part I use.

I showed up to a farm at 7am because my mom posted on Facebook. I left with something I didn't have before: the proof that I could do hard things I'd never done, if I just kept showing up.