light

 The light is different now than it was in high summer.  The sun's angle is lower and shadows abound even at mid day.  But the light is fuller, somehow, rounder and more promising than in the full glare of July.  Harvest is on us now, with more to do and less daylight to do it in.  The sense of urgency grows.

The cattle graze pastures higher in both cellulose and carbohydrates now.  Each year the early grass, so lush and soft, hardens as the summer waxes and wanes, and then in fall, the surprise once again that the fall grass is better feed, the cattle gain faster and are more satisfied.  I spend some time each day watching them, envying a bit their effortless ability to harvest continuously throughout the year rather than stacking the whole job up to be done in October.  

We are happy and grateful this autumn for the excellent corn and soybean crops we have to harvest and for the abundant health of the animals.  Our joy is tempered by knowledge of the losses suffered by others and the genuinely hard life of so many.  We know our turn will come.

For a farmer, the fear of the next hard time is always as real as the memory of the last one.  But we are, none of us, promised anything beyond the moment.  Wisdom teaches us to live in and with that knowledge.  And so we can often find joy in what is immediately at hand.