At this time of year, harvest is abundant! Processing food for the winter months is all consuming and the incoming volume of produce seems relentless. We have been working our way through bushels of tomatoes, peppers, apples and cucumbers that have blessed our counters. It’s hard to see that volume of perishable food as a blessing when you’re drowning in domestic tasks, but it truly is. We have such gratitude for the fresh fruits and vegetables that have come to us from toxin free environments and loving hands. In the midst of feverish attention to kitchen tasks, I am trying to stop and remind myself that this food will sustain us, that my work now will be what sustains us. The process of storage and use undulates between stressful and easy. The beauty is in this binary relationship of catching and storing energy for later release. This burst of hard work makes room for the more laid back introspective months to come. I love the ability to pop down to the cellar for a jar of this or that in the winter, opening a jar of homemade whatever brings back a rush of summer in the midst of snow covered branches.
There are other harvests happening at this time too, as we take stock of how we spent our time this past year. We have been noticing which things we’ve put our energy into that were fruitful and which were not. It is in the harvest season where we already begin to dream ahead to next spring, postulating on which plants to keep and which to replace with something different. Did we have enough of this or too much of that? We are also thinking on our time as a commodity as of late. Looking at how we spend our minutes, with too much of this or too little of that. The beauty of harvest is that even though our hands are busy, we are set to a task which helps our busy minds sort out the emotional harvest of the year.
