CSA Week 18!
Well, the final week is finally here. It has been quite a year! Though we try not to talk about the weather all the time it really has been the difining feature of this season. What with the extremely late snow in mid May to the record setting rains in September, it has felt at times like a slog.
Usually I am pretty grumpy about the arrival of winter (why does it keep coming back?!), but this year I am ready. I have made peace with the snow.
One of the nice things about this craft is the seasonality. It can be a source of extreme frustration when the seasons do not cooperate, but it also has the built in cycles of rest and work. Personally I tend to keep my momentum going in what ever I am doing--at the end of the day I stop reluctantly and in the morning I start reluctantly. Knowing that about myself I am sure I would just burn right up without a break if it weren't for the natural end of the season. I'd still be out there fretting over our peppers if old Jack Frost didn't just sneak up and take them from me each year. I'd be out there kneeling in the mud picking rocks through the winter if they never just froze to the ground and got covered with a blanket of snow.
Sometimes I wonder if some of our modern weather-proofing-climate-controlling-all weather technology isn't actually something of a curse since it steals some of the rest and rhythm that we used to have to respect. After all, why would any normal american stop being buys if he didn't HAVE to.
No, I am thankful for the unbeatable winter here (sometimes...It's still a struggle to submit). I am grateful for a chance to read and think and plan and do small things. Like the plants, I will turn my energy inward. Away from the busy, colorful, outward, and visible leaves and flowers. Now is the time to develop the secret seeds for next year. The small (yet powerful!) ideas and inspirations that were pollinated during the summer. I have let them swell and harden and take shape in my head in the late summer. Now they fall to the ground and use the freeze and thaw and snow of winter to work their way down into the dark earth where they wait and prepare.
We will be small. We will be still. But we will sprout again in time!
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