By BECKY NELSON
By Becky Nelson
Geese are gathering and honking their way to new territory. Hummingbirds are disappearing from feeders. Foliage is turning color and leaves are turning. Pumpkins are appearing in their orange glory. Raspberries and apples are being picked. Summer vegetables are losing their edge and slowing production.
Fall is here.
This crossover season is a tough one on the farm. We are still trying to perform many summer tasks while trying to clean up and put to bed still other summer projects. We just made some hay this week, and hope to make more as the month clicks along. We usually have the bulk of our hay production in the barn by now with a couple of second cuts still to go, but this year we haven’t had an opportunity between rains to make much. This cuts into the time we should be pruning in the raspberry patch or picking in the orchard. But as some say, “it is what it is.”
Fall is a favorite season for me. I don’t much care for the shortening daylight hours, but the late summer blooms, discoveries of Monarch butterflies and their caterpillars and chrysalis’, the honking and gathering geese, flocks of birds gathering for journeys to the South and the stunning foliage the season brings all give me cheer. We have a nice big patch of sunflowers near the farmhouse, and I can’t resist picking a few for inside. I currently have four bouquets scattered about the house to enjoy their beauty at every turn.
There is much ugliness in our world right now. Devastating storms caused by chaning climate, debilitating disease, hunger, homelessness, criminal activity, hatred, fires, floods, and wars. Suppression of classes and genders and cruelty toward others. It is easy to be swept into the blackness, and we need to start consciously being kinder, gentler and more understanding of one another. We aren’t going to agree about everything in this wonderful land of freedom we inhabit, but we do need to agree to disagree and take a path that we all can share without loads of judgement and shouts of anger. We need to start looking more at the common good rather than our individual bubbles. We need to look around us more at the people and places in our physical world and looking less at our little circles and our virtual world.
We need to be “big picture” society. No decisions will make everyone happy, but we need to think about the future in our decisions instead of just how this decision will affect ME or YOU right now. But most importantly, we need to enjoy our lives while we are able to do so.
The days are short. The seasons are short. The years are short. Why spend all of our precious time fighting and squabbling and thinking just about ourselves?
We need to get out and plant some seeds for the future and place those sunflower all around us to remind ourselves of the beauty and splendor right beside us.
We need to gather our flock like the geese winging around and travel together to get where we want to be.
Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. You may reach her at [email protected].
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