My handsome man came into the house a few days ago with the mail in hand and a grin on his face. “Guess what came?” he asked, and handed me this beautiful issue of Bella Grace, a delightful magazine I stumbled across about a year ago and immediately loved, and occasionally buy at a local bookstore. This one, though, has been eagerly anticipated, since one of my short pieces was published in it. It won’t hit the newsstands for another two weeks, so this was the pleasantest of surprises!
It is a small piece of writing, and I don’t think it is even as long as the columns I’ve been writing for the newspaper. It is tucked somewhere in the middle of this 160-page magazine among dozens of other beautifully written pieces.
It is a little thing. A small triumph. But it represents dreams that God put on my heart 20 years ago, and that have persisted through all the strange twists and turns of life. Dreams that God has been slowly satisfying in His own good and perfect time.
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I woke up last night to the lullaby of rain on the roof. Gentle rain. Peaceful rain. No hail, no devastating winds. Just music on the roof. We woke to 2 inches in the rain gauge and another inch has fallen since. It it one of those turning-inward kinds of days, where outside chores are accomplished as quickly as possible, and the oven and stove and dehydrator all warm the house and fill it with the tastes and smells of the season.
But fall really is less of a season and more of a sense, or an over-abundance of the senses. It is the time of gathering in, of putting up, of savoring and preserving.
The color palate shifts, in one last glorious display before the long winter sleep, as the last of the flowers send up their leaves and open their buds, and the trees, which in summer are a wonderful backdrop of green, burst into the most vivid of colors in a center-stage kind of a way. Living right inside the treeline of what becomes the Black Hills National Forest a little further west, a ponderosa pine forest, the hardwoods hide until the fall, at which point they come out of hiding in flamboyant style.
The last of the harvest is trickling in – the last of the fruit tasted sun-warm off the vine, the last of the shaking of the branches, the last eaten while perched in the branches to reach just one more. But even when the last of the harvest has trickled in, the work still isn’t done, and it continues in a pleasant flurry. The whirr of the dehydrator, the bubbling of the waterbath canner, the tastes and aromas of the summer, preserved for the winter. Every countertop surface is a chaos of things preserved and things to be preserved – The jams and jellies from the abundance of wild fruit, summertime salsas from the garden, enough to last us through next summer, bags and bags of dehydrated apples and zucchini, and jars of glassed eggs to get us through the winter slump. It is a delectable time of the year!
Flowers I thought wouldn’t bloom after the August hailstorm wiped out the gardens have flourished in the interim. One last bouquet was hastily cut last night, on the eve of what could still turn into our first winter storm if the temps drop tonight. Herbs were gathered in quickly – mint and thyme and lavender and dill – and are bundled neatly to dry.
But the savor of the season is mixed with the sweetness of routine – Baskets of eggs fresh from the coop, loaves of fresh bread, still warm.
Daily walks in the freshness of autumn, with a passel of dogs.
The company of a good pup.
Kittens in the barn, shades of cinnamon and the one little white one.
The view between a horse’s ears.
A certain pair of eyes in a sun-browned face.
Quiet evenings.
Beautiful sunrises.
Winter will be here before we know it. It is storing up the joy of times like this that keep the winter blues at bay. So I’m just listening to the whisper of the rain on the roof, and soaking it all in.
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First printed in the Custer County Chronicle, October 11, 2023
Every other year, right about this time, when the leaves have started to turn and the shadows have lengthened, two gnarled and twisted apple trees blush rosy-red with clusters of fruit hanging heavy on the boughs, like clusters of grapes. They are my grandpa’s trees, planted some forty years ago, and are the best apples I have ever tasted. There were others, but only these two made it through the decades. I always get a little sentimental on a bumper-crop year. Grandpa has been gone for 15 years, and there’s something poignant and important in continuing a task he started.
And what task is there more intrinsically autumnal than that of the apple harvest? The warmth of the sun, the honeyed aroma of the fruit, the smooth, cool satin of the apple skin, the soft thud as apples hit the grass or the peals of laughter as falling apples are dodged, or biting into the crisp white of sun-warmed apple fresh-picked from the tree! While everything else is preparing for a winter sleep, some of us hurry to gather in the summer sunlight, to enjoy when the sun is at its lowest and coldest. After the apple picking comes the real work, the washing and cutting and coring and slicing and freezing or canning or baking. But it is a pleasant sort of work. A good sort of work. A wholesome work. A slow work. A kind of work that is out of step with society.
It’s a madcap world we live in. It is always about the next thing, something new, something different, something to boast about, something to give that little dopamine rush that comes with a handful of “likes” on Facebook. The next toy, the next expensive vacation, the nice car, high-end restaurants, the Instagram house and the Pinterest-worthy décor. Nothing is wrong with any of those things, in and of themselves, but somehow we have turned those things, culturally speaking, into “the American dream.” The instant-gratification of Walmart and Amazon have cheapened our tastes, and punched holes in our pocketbooks.
The very act of planting a tree is counter to the modern way of thinking. I have this sneaking suspicion that most people wouldn’t bat an eye at $50 spent on a meal at a restaurant, a meal that is consumed in an hour, but would cringe to spend $50 on a fruit tree that can be enjoyed for years and decades and generations. But we don’t plan that far ahead anymore. We want instant gratification, or at least a reasonable guarantee of personal gratification somewhere in the not too far distant future. Everything is impermanent, and a lot of money and time is spent pursuing our whims. New hair, new tattoos, new clothes, new job, new house, new experiences. Those things can bring a fleeting enjoyment, I suppose, but does the enjoyment last? And who experiences the enjoyment besides ourselves?
As I pick apples from my grandpa’s apple trees, as I wash and core and slice them, it strikes me just how far this enjoyment spreads. These apples will find their way into pies for the Rainbow Bible Ranch pie auction in November, and onto our dinner tables for the holidays. Did Grandpa picture that, as he dug a hole and settled the roots into the rocky soil? Did he picture his grown granddaughter harvesting fruit, and gifting bags of dried apples to friends and family, as he watched his little trees struggle to survive over the intervening years? Four decades and two generations later, we are breathing in the fall freshness and shaking down the fruit, and will enjoy the bounty for the next year or more, thanks to the simple and selfless act of my grandpa planting a tree. How poignant it is that the fruit we enjoy now was begun decades ago. I wonder if he pictured the joy that he would bring with his little orchard!
Such a simple act, and how profound.
We live in a society that tells us to forget about the next decades, forget about building a lasting legacy, live in the moment and follow your heart, nevermind the consequences or the collateral damage. I can’t change how society thinks, but I can intentionally walk out of step with it. I can cultivate a future-oriented mindset, a mindset that thinks about the next generation. I can think about the joy and gladness of others, and whether the decisions I make and the actions I take are done for my benefit alone, or whether there is a broader vision behind my life.
Because I want to leave something beautiful for those that follow.
Like Grandpa’s apples.
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About two months ago, a yellow bobtailed tomcat showed up in our barn. We knew what was coming and actually were glad of it, since a tragic set of circumstances this summer depleted our cat population significantly…We knew we’d be needing some more mousers! Well, it very quickly became apparent that both Grey Cat and Yellow Cat (I didn’t name them. Brad did) were expecting.
Friday morning, we found Grey Cat in the barn cuddled up with a little squirming pile of three kittens, a dark yellow one, a cream colored one, and a bright white one. Boy, she was proud of her little family! And there was Yellow Cat, her maternal hormones just raging, trying to mother Grey Cat’s kittens. We finally resorted to locking her up in the tack room Friday evening, and Saturday morning she was mothering a single tiny little yellow kitten. We left her locked up all day yesterday, and I finally let her out last night. Grey Cat heard Yellow Cat’s kitten crying, since Yellow Cat was a little incompetent, and darted into the tack room and stole him, squirreling him away to her nest of kittens. Yellow Cat was unphased and sauntered over to join the group cuddle.
Well, this morning there was one extra kitten, another little yellow male, and the two cats happily sharing mother duties.
What a funny little family.
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The first day of fall came and went a few days ago, with a flurry of exciting activity, selling yearlings and enjoying the sweet coolness of the beginning of a new season. A lot of people brace for the end of the summer. I suppose I kind of understand it. I guess I do too, a little. Not every summer, but summers like this one. The warmth, the rainstorms that have kept us green, the ease of accomplishing basic tasks, the colors and sights and sounds and tastes of summertime. The fruitfulness.
I have enjoyed (almost) the last of the flowers of my hail-wrecked garden – To my delight, a number of my plants bloomed again, and I was able to cut yet another bouquet for the kitchen. There is something about fresh-cut flowers that touches my little soul and delights the eyes, and when I’ve grown them myself, cared for them and cultivated them, it is an even keener enjoyment.
The garden is slowly slowing down, as the fruit harvest is in full swing. This is where the fun really is…Because now the summer can wind itself away, and winter can wind itself up, and we’ll still be tasting the fruit of summertime. The early summer fruits like chokecherries prep us for the pouring-in of everything in the fall.
Salsa, and basil, dried apples and the abundance of apples that will be frozen for pies are just some of the evidence of the wonderful bounty of this year! Days have been filled with picking and washing and processing gallons upon gallons of fruit, hawthorn berries and plums and apples, into things we will enjoy for months and potentially years – butters and jams and juices and fruit for pies. A gallon jar of apple scrap vinegar is brewing on the counter, and I have finally started waterglassing eggs from the summer abundance, which will hopefully allow me to continue to fill customer orders with fresh eggs over the slump of the winter, and Brad and I can eat and use the glassed eggs.
Winter doesn’t seem as long, when you can continue to enjoy the summer, even after it is gone.
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Not every year is a good plum year, so I am delighted to say we went a little wild with the plums the last few weeks…I wouldn’t be surprised if we were pushing twenty gallons of plums picked…easily fifteen.
A thicket in the hayfield that doesn’t generally produce produced like crazy, and we also had access to a beautiful plum tree on Hart Ranch that apparently was always thought to be a cherry tree but isn’t. It produced the most delicious plums I’ve ever had.
We now have plums in the freezer for pies and such, canned pie filling, plum butter, plum jam, and (today’s project) three gallons of juice, for kombucha making and for drinking. It is reminiscent of grapefruit juice and is great hot! I’m thinking hot cider, but plum juice…
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