Shine On, Harvest Moon

Fall is my favorite time of year- my favorite season that is. I love the changing colors of the trees and scents of fires burning and dug up earth. I love the feeling of breezes just cool enough to make a light sweater appreciated and the crunch of brittle leaves underfoot. It's also hunting season and I'm hoping HH gets a deer or two for our new(to us) freezer. In a few weeks we are also gettting 1/4 cow and we've never done that. i'm pretty excited at the thought of all that food in the freezers-good, clean, non-gmo,grass-fed ,barely processed food.

Its the time of year our ancestors called Harvest- something we rarely do anymore as "seasons" have all but been erased when it comes to the availability of food. Harvest time used to dictate the start of the school year, and it was the reason for initiating Daylight Savings. It was the herald of the second half of the year- the time when all the worrying over weather, all the sweat and sore muscles and labor could be justified with celebrations of thanksgivings for the bounty their God, their land, and their own hands had wrought.
Sadly, we don't really participate in harvest time anymore. The grocery stores supply their own bounties-perfect, uniform, shining examples of the best of what miracles of time and space have to give us. No mis-shaped apples, no gnarly carrots, no specks of dirt on the potatoes that betray their humble beginnings.

I'm so thankful we had a garden this year. It was a lot of work but it was good, hard work and it felt good to be out there every day with my feet and hands in the soil, getting to know our plants. At first, when the first fruits appeared I wondered if Eve had felt the same way- hoping and waiting for her own plants to grow after the heartbreak of leaving a place where food sprouted from the words of God. Did she ever, like me, jump up and down laughing like a maniac shouting "Its working!Its working!" not caring if her neighbors thought she was losing it? 

Not only did our garden provide us with food, it gave us a months-long study in life-cycles, insect identification and pest management, cross-pollination, and dependency on weather and the will of God to provide. We learned so much about how to save seeds, how to compost, why tomatoes crack, when squash vines need calcium, and how beautiful okra flowers are. Most importantly, we learned where our food comes from, and what fresh food really tastes like. We learned how many colors the inside of one tomato can hold, and when peas are the sweetest. I learned I like green beans, and our kids learned not to be afraid of a little dirt on their carrot.

Now we are tearing down what little is left standing, turning the soil and putting the beds to bed, so to speak. I'm not going to lie, its a little sad laying bare in a few hours what took months to mature. But we've been saving seeds and there is that which our ancestors must have had too-hope that next year will be just as good or even better.