Six Arrows Farm Update

I tasted the spice of fall last night on my way to the root cellar and it surprised me like the unexpected visit of an old friend.  The sweltering August sun fades into the hazy glow of September and Indian Summer is a glowing veil drawn over this threshold between summer and fall; a time for the dying season to yield with dignity to the chilling of the waning year and cast a glance of plenty over its shoulder before going to sleep.  Granted, summer still clings to nearly everything in livid green, but here and there a leaf or branch has dared to don the finery of autumn and flaunt it before a host soon to be clamoring in flames of color.

When I was little this farewell nod of the world to summer unsettled me, just as I could never relish the sound of a minor key in music.  I thought nothing should mar the effervescence of a major chord until I learned that the most beautiful resolutions can blossom out of the deepest melancholy.  I wished spring could come again and again to renew and burst forth perpetually until I understood that to have that, I would have to forgo fruit.  The old year will grow cold and roll around whether we wish it or no.  This is the most difficult part about a requiem...the time of its coming is not left to our choosing...yet we are given the gift of singing it...and what a glory and a joy this can be when the fruit of joyful expectation and certainty of hope rises out of the depths of pathos.  So also in the passing of a season there is the joy of expectation.  The certainty of a bright return of everything good.  Harvest is richness and plenty is promise not only in themselves, but also because they provide for the length of days between now and the fulfillment of another promise and another harvest.

Mama and I cut zinnias and snapdragons for market this Friday in the purply evening light.  So blissfully peaceful was the world nodding in the twilight.  Mama turned to me and said, "Look at the beautiful sky...how it makes everything look pretty."  I turned and faced the closing of the day.  Our pea fence and ranks of tomatoes stood out in bold relief against the magnificent panorama of the western sky; the deepest of azure blue flanked with amber clouds lined in flagrant flaming gold.  Every shade and hue was saturated and bursting with vivid glory.  Mama was right.  The glory of the sky lent a sublime and illuminating splendor to everything, drenching the garden with golden light.  The flowers will not look the way they did that night on someone's table today.  The beauty they will bring to a home is of another kind, not marred, but amended.  Tomorrow they will wither and fade away.  And it is fitting that it should be so for the present.  If they were to last forever, their beauty would be cheapened and commonplace.  In their time, they breath the freshness and joy of the garden into a home and masterfully fulfill the role for which they were created...adornment.  So does every shifting beauty in the earth become a passing testimony to an immovable reality.  Transient creation day and night praises the eternal Creator.

We are preserving and freezing in expectation...capturing this passing plenty for days of winter barrenness. Wonderful panoply of color, flavor, and texture is heaped in the caverns of our chest freezers and falls into ranks of jars along groaning shelves.  From a short hiatus with rice as our primary starch when last year’s potatoes finally gave out, we transition back to  “spuds”...for the present fresh dug from the warm earth, later to be wrested from the depths of the root cellar.  Apple pie (made with apples that ripened from blossoms on our own trees) is permeating the house with its quintessential zesty sweetness this blessed minute.

As a side note...a new member of Six Arrows Farm arrived this morning and is strutting her style on the turf of the hen pasture.  We think this shot of her deserves a good caption...any ideas?