Farm Stand

Personally, I don’t set much stock in calendars. Clocks, too, are something I would rather live without. I am enslaved to the clock only when it is for the purpose of being considerate to others. To arrive at work or a party or dinner when expected.

The calendar, in humankind’s inimitable fashion, seeks to quantify and organize and lull us into some illusion of control. Earth laughs. I can’t abide by the declarations that this or that date is “the first day of…”. Spring, summer, winter, whatever, is not going to be corralled so. Now maybe these dates are correct for someplace that is exactly centered between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle, and longitudinally centered from seacoasts. So, somewhere in the middle of Missouri, I would guess, these dates might be close. For anyone that lives anywhere but the center of Missouri, these shift a smidge.

As any regular reader may know, I can’t pigeon-hole the seasons of my world down into four categories. There are a thousand seasons in any given transit of our orbit, and they overlap and blend, coincide, peacefully cohabitate, and usher one another in and out.

Season’s End

Now, we thrill to Harvest Season. This is one of the longest and finest of seasons, and literally bares for us the fruits and bounty of our world. Really it begins way back in June. The earliest harvests are June-bearing strawberries, horseradish, bouquets of peony. Production cranks up during the period declared “July”, and every manner of food and flower fills the stand at Parson’s Farm, while the farmers themselves continue their frenzied scurrying from field to field. In August, the longest-awaited treasures are pulled from the rich soil, picked from their heavy vines, plucked from their thorny canes, all to a steady chorus of buzzing bees, celebrating their own harvest.

Farmer Girl

It’s our Earth, too.

Bound For Market

Sea of Blooms

Fresh As It Gets

Three Generations

There is an inherent beauty in this cycle, this work. Of bending one’s back to commune with the soil, to nurture and care for these tender shoots with the love of a mother and the patience of Job. To trust and to dream that these fragments will grow and mature, that our efforts will yield their worth. And each year, Mother Earth grants these humble wishes. For thousands of years, humankind has marveled at this feat, thanked the good green Earth, languished in the beauty and scent of her floral raiment. There is something timeless, something unbreakable about these acts, this farm life. The Cosmos doesn’t give two shakes of a thistle down about your TV and your internet and your cell phone. That little seed is following its own program, recorded millennia ago, evolving and changing only when necessary. You can high-tech the living daylights out of stuff, including your farm machinery and your milk houses, but that seed is entirely unimpressed. Nothing you can do will hasten its march toward maturity.

Harbinger

There was a time when nearly everyone was a farmer. Even in the stifling crowded cities, homes had a “kitchen garden”, sometimes wedged into the tiniest slice of terra firma, a remote landlocked island at the bottom of brick and glass and steel canyons. Here would grow thyme and garlic, carrots and sweet peas. Rosemary and rose hips, rosy red radishes, Swiss chard and kale, iceberg lettuce, cucumbers and green beans. Every child knew how to weed. I suspect if you asked children these days, I mean big enough to know, like ten years old, which fruits or vegetables grow in the ground, which on stalks, which on vines, which on trees, they’d be hard pressed for answers. It occurs to me that this might also apply, in these techno-modern times, to many adults. Occasionally it will occur to someone to ask “Do you know where your food comes from?”

Nature’s Candy

September the first. There. Just the words conjure an image, don’t they? Our overly organized, over-sized and overly analytical brain connects dots on a fuzzy-logic web in our minds, and a signal flare is launched: SUMMER HAS ENDED. Back-to-school, starting college, Labor Day.

Such hogwash. Summer is in full bloom in September, and in fact it is the very essence of Harvest Season. It comes to all the land, not just humans and their farm stands and their grocer’s produce section. Bracketing the explosion of spring birthing, trees now finish the last movement of their long, slow opera of procreation, as mature nuts, seed pods, fruits and cones fall to the fertile ground. Harvest Season now for squirrels and bears and birds. Whole lifetimes and life cycles are lived at a frenetic pace for the curious seasonal fungi of fall.

Beneath The Pines

We knew all this more intimately in the old days. Before Clarence Birdseye flash-froze every edible imaginable. Before refrigerated boxcars and freezer trucks. Harvest took time to bring in, to process, to can and store in the root cellar. And after all the preserving was done came the slaughter of farm animals. Some to be smoked or salted, some to be pickled.

Becker’s Babies

By the time all that work was done, Harvest would have given way to the next overlapping and concentric backdrop of seasons. And we decided this was now a time to rest a bit. To enjoy and celebrate all that Harvest brings to our hearths and homes. To eat some of those wonderful prizes, and in particular, a bird that would not be overwintered. Surrounding the turkey would be the great and generous bounty from Mother Earth. We will sit together and give thanks for the full cornucopia.

Festive Table

We’ll call it Thanksgiving.

Take care, and keep in touch.

Paz