this is November.

A month has passed since I've left the farm and returned to a life of sidewalks, showers and (one more time, with feeling) coffee-makin.'  

Farms make you pay attention. In the last few weeks especially, I often felt rooted to the ground as we continued the rhythm  of harvesting, planting, cultivating. Rooted in the sense that I had become part of the valley, that the seasons were turning around the mountain, and that standing in the middle of the three acres we worked on, I could feel that turning. We pulled up irrigation tape, covered what's left in the fields with cozy row cover, and took up the plastic. We ripped out tomato plants, squash plants, watermelon, okra, peppers. We planted garlic and onions and strawberries for the spring. We harvested the ears of dried corn and beans. We made tiny ornamental wreaths from gumfrina buds. We scrubbed the barn-apartment from top to bottom.  And then, with lettuce, arugula, turnips, beets, and cabbage still growing, we left.

I don't know yet what the season on the farm means for  the direction of my life. But my observations, of the weather, the tininess, the dirt and water and green food, have a lot to say on the subject.Another observer of field and forest puts it better than I could hope to and I'll leave you with her words, shortly. First, stop what you're doing. Get up, go outside, play in the dirt, plant a seed. Call your neighbor and find out where to get your vegetables from. Pay attention.

The Summer Day
Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?