September Contemplation: Well, Hello Fall
Monthly Post #5: Falling In Love While Farming
As I reflect on yet another month that has too quickly come and gone, I savor my September experiences that have helped me to fall up. One deeply profound exploit has been shadowing farmers in preparation of writing a series of stories leading up to Thanksgiving. Without giving any spoilers, I will just say this: I have joined farmers in fields throughout Montana, Michigan, and Missouri, where I have experienced the lives of those who feed us. They are a hearty and fiercely independent breed. Lovers of the land. And every time afterwards, when I returned home along Florida’s beach coast, I long to connect better to my natural world, away from the noise of nonsense that has accumulated in our culture.
The past few weeks I have breathed dusty air and looked up at a full bulbous moon. I have spotted deer, rabbits, antelope, hawks, and Hungarian partridges. I have watched wheat, corn, and beans churn into the insides of massive machinery and spit back out into grain carts, onto semi trucks, and into storage bins. And I have witnessed men and women love, with every piece of their brimming souls, a complicated industry that is more often dictated by folks who have never touched foot in a field. I have returned home wanting more than anything to eat better, live more simply, love more deeply.
So on the heels of farming, what I would like to leave you with in September is this: falling up has everything to do with falling in love with a way of life that allows for space and silence and time to breathe, a way of life that is both brutally hard and beautifully simple. I hope September allowed you space, silence, and time to have felt love for yourself, for others, and for life as it did me while joining farmers in their wide-open fields.
Stay tuned for more land-loving stories in November as I introduce you to some of the faces behind farming. But before that, we must first welcome October, my birthday month, where I will be highlighting “31 Days of Self-care.”
Here’s September in Review in case you missed it: “Well, Hello Fall”:
- Monthly Post #1: A DEBtalk with a Local Beekeeper—Happy National Honey Month
- Monthly Post #2: Falling Up when Falling Down—I have reason to be, but I don’t have to be.
- Monthly Post #3: Significance over Success—patience, one step at a time, trusting God to write the rest.
- Monthly Post #4: Transitioning into Falling Up: “Thank you Lord, I made it through summer.”