I have always liked…

I have always liked the Fall of the year. When I was a child, I liked the Fall because it meant Halloween and Thanksgiving. It was door to door Trick or Treats, when the only trick on the kids was somebody jumping out of the bushes. That was before the beginning of screening candy apples for razor blades. Then it was Thanksgiving with all the hoopla of the Horn of Plenty. It was Pilgrims and Indians sitting down at the feast table together—well, at least in the grade school programs.

At my house we couldn’t have all the family together, as my family was a military family with six kids, four of us boys; so we were frequently scattered about the globe for one reason or another. But that never deterred our mother from putting on her pie-o-rama at Thanksgiving. And if all or one of the boys happened to be there then we spent time, lots of time, in the kitchen with her, rolling out pie dough, fitting it into tins, filling it with cherries, or apples, or lemon, chocolate, pecans, butterscotch, or peach fillings. We burnt our fingers taking them out of the oven but we didn’t care. That was my mother’s way of restoring us, however briefly, to a kinder, gentler community. We all carried those days with us and when we dropped our sea bags on the living room floor that is what we returned to.

Years later some of that remains. My family is smaller now, and the Fall has acquired additional significance, as I am now frequently reminded of Autumn as maturity and perhaps with a sense of loss of some of the folly of youth, but not all of that. I am reminded of the first quatrain of William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73.”

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

Which lines bring me to the sadder and more subtle significance of Autumn.

The time of plenty, the time of harvest leading us into the preparations for winter. We gather food and firewood; we winterize the vehicles and consider the harsh possibilities of losing electricity in a blizzard.

In short we prepare to hunker down if necessary. In the meantime we take advantage of every possibility to carry on as usual—harvesting with the greatest respect for what that harvesting requires and entails. In this manner do we here on this ranch wish to pass on to you, our extended family, what we have tried to glean from our lives. I extend my thanks to you and wish you a joyous and thoughtful Autumn. Thank Nature for its gift.