The more vitriolic our politics become, the more I want to disappear in the fields or down the pathways of the small farm we live on.
This is unlike me. I’m an extrovert. The 2020 pandemic’s daily isolation was slow torture, no matter how I like rural quiet. Besides, I’m a big believer in raising one’s voice, calling for change, talking to neighbors, voting. And, of course, writing. No sticking a head in the sand for me. Most of the time, anyway.
Yet here we are on the verge of a completely unnecessary government shutdown because a few congressmen want to break things; a House speaker in Kevin McCarthy who is happy to drag the country through a shutdown to keep his job and a Republican presidential candidate in Donald Trump, who advocates executing the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff for being loyal to the constitution instead of to his precious self.
Forgive me while I turn off the TV and head for the pumpkin patch.
After all, harvest season is here. The signs have been here for awhile, and they are so much more satisfying and calming than the early Halloween that is Republican politics.
Farming, even on a small acreage, is all about cycles, dependable and comforting.
For example, the swallows that nested in the rafters of our barn since spring packed their bags in July. They were right to leave early, as they fly to South America, and they still have to teach fledglings how to manage the arduous long migration.
The garlic has long since dried, harvested from the fields in midsummer. The tomatoes were slow to come this year - blame the cold spring - but after a spurt in August now they, too, have slowed down.
Pete planted the corn a bit late. He’s been picking corn for the past two weeks. They are sweet, but with cobs that are a little small to sell. With more than we need, we give them away to Mexican friends who use them for tamales, promising to share the recipe.
And potatoes! We had a bumper crop this year, gladdening my Irish heart. Pete grew four different kinds of fingerlings - Magic Molly, a purple potato that has proven to be wildly popular with customers at the market; Yukon Gold; red; and red-gold, a pretty combination of the two colors. Bushel baskets are piled high with potatoes in the barn, still with dirt on them, the better to preserve the tubers which will brighten our breakfasts and dinners to come. With only two market days left, we’ll never sell them all, but they will keep until spring, hanging in burlap bags in our cool basement.
The crop that always seems to pour in, year after colorful year, involves peppers - red, green, yellow, banana, chili, sweet, hot and even luscious, glossy brown chocolate peppers, so named for their color and not their taste. I’ll never figure out what it is in our soil that makes peppers hold an annual block party here. But before the first frost, I’ll frantically pick pounds of them from the fields and leave them in bags at neighbors’ doorsteps lest they go to waste. I freeze them whole for winter stews and stir-fry.
Pete has been filling bushel baskets of squash, the quintessential autumn crop: acorn, butternut and Delicata. I never heard of Delicata squash until Pete began to plant it. It’s been around for more than 100 years, but fell out of favor during the Great Depression before getting popular again in the 1990s. Patty pan squash is in, scattered in the fields like just-landed UFOs. We’ve got a few pumpkins, too, but our granddaughter, Miss Ellie, at 4, has first dibs on those.
I can still harvest baby kale, lettuce and radishes for salads, although I know my ability to run outside and pick my lunch will soon be curtailed as the temperature drops.
The brightest sign of the season is the moon, a spotlight so intense I almost don’t need a flashlight to take the dogs out at night (but I do, anyway). It’s called the Harvest Moon because farmers used it before electricity to help them gather their crops. This year, on Friday Sept. 29 it’s also a supermoon, coinciding with the autumnal equinox and appearing larger than other full moons.
It’s beautiful.
It also makes me remember that as I worked as a nurses’ aide in college, my co-workers and I told one another that patients were more difficult during the full moon. Such a legend is centuries old, one reason why the word “lunacy” is derived from the Latin word for moon.
Which brings us, of course, back to the impending government shutdown, tantrums of Republican congressmen, incompetence from Speaker McCarthy and Trump’s foaming fantasies of fascism.
Maybe there is something to the influence of the full moon after all?
I’m heading back to the pumpkin patch.
Foaming fantasies of fascism…..great alliteration! Great column too.
Terrific read, great picture. Thank you!