It’s been a long time since I’ve been back home in Indiana during the fall, and I forgot how busy it is.
For the last few months or so my mother in particular has been taking steps to preserve the harvest of our small garden and fruit trees my parents have on the property (plus the fruits of other farms and orchards nearby). We have jars and jars of applesauce, strawberry jam, peaches, and tomatoes in the pantry and bags of frozen blueberries and green beans lining the downstairs freezer.
For our part, we’ve been making plenty of applesauce from orchard forays using a crank mill. It’s just that we eat it too quickly to make canning it worth it.
the physicality of fall
I love the physicality of fall. Fall is a season of doing. It is a season of picking things from branches and chopping them and crushing them and poking them into jars. It is a season of raking up fallen leaves into piles just so we can scatter them again. It is this time of year that we find joy in tromping miles through muddy fields to find the perfect pumpkin. We like slicing it open and pulling its entrails out in slimy, stringy masses. We cut silly faces into the pumpkin and light a candle inside. It’s a lot of mess and work for one or two moments of delight, but those moments are worth it.
Fall is a flurry. It is stocked with simple delights, woven together by strong arms and sharp knives and heat. Fall is packing jars full to bursting with fruit: wedged, mashed, sauced, candied, jellied, jammed. It is brilliant bubbling pots on a million stoves spiking the air with cinnamon. Every day now I walk into our little basement apartment to spicy aromas.
Spring is the ground opening up and everything waking up and stretching, and summer is the steady pursuit of leisure, the continuous desire to sit on the porch swing sipping a mint julep. Winter is the languor of those waiting to wake up when the weather finally relents. There is work in all three, but fall has them beat, in my opinion.
There is little time between the ripeness and the rot, so hurry! Preserve the fruit while you can! Turn it into delicious things so that when we pry off the lid in the Februrary we can smell the season again, so we can taste freshness when the world is asleep. Creatures all over the world are preparing for winter – storing nuts and berries away, eating until they can’t eat any more, layering on fat. Every thing is working, because that long sleep is coming, and if you don’t prepare…
Why does the death of all things bring with it the harvest of all things?
Let me take another angle, because I’m wandering far afield. It’s just that the fields are such a rich palette right now. Do you see the gold of the cornfield right before it turns brown? Do you see the red and orange trickling down the trees?
I like doing dishes.
accomplishing something
I’ve often thought of this task as refreshing to me because it is simple. You wash a dish. You rinse the dish. You stack it to dry. You move to the next one. I have enough larger problems to wrestle with in my life that cleaning a dirty dish is cathartic. Afterwards, when everything is wiped away and I see the dishes stacked neatly into their slots, I feel like I’ve accomplished something. Not much, but something. And if I can accomplish something, I can accomplish other things. Maybe I can even accomplish important things.
Doing dishes is like harvesting or canning in the autumn – it is ordering my world. It is raking the leaves into piles and winterizing the pipes. It is stacking jar after jar of applesauce on the pantry shelf. It is physical.
Before we ever fell, we knew fall – and not just knew it, but rejoiced in it. The delegation of the world and its ordering was cause of great fulfillment. Name the animals. Tend the garden. Eat its fruit, except… And when winter loomed and thorns sprouted around the raspberries and grubs latched onto the roots, we worked harder. The sweat was honest sweat, dues paid for disobedient actions.
And here we are, once again, preparing for a long winter ahead of us. But by the sweat of our brows and the favor of our Father, we have a harvest that will supply our needs. It’s not always this way, and knowing this fact reminds me to give thanks for the undeserved bounty, and to look for ways to give it away.
Plant. Nurture. Harvest. Preserve. Eat. Share. Sleep. Wake. Repeat.
rhythm in the physical
The rhythm is life. It gives life. And every autumn I’m reminded of why I wash dishes, and rake leaves, and change diapers, and write words. I was given this “ordering” task long ago. Each dish, inexplicably, pushes back the despair of a world that’s given up. Each jar of fruit pushes back the hunger of a world that knows only how to take. Each pile of leaves is a moment of joy in a world full of pain. Each diaper is a way to show my children I love them in a world where love is difficult to see. Each word is another tiny candle flickering in a darkening world.
The days are getting shorter, the nights longer, and the frosts are coming fast. Now is the time to prepare.
Isn’t it good to find salt and light available to us in every corner of our lives? We should plan some sort of national holiday around giving thanks, and spend all day preparing food for our friends and families to devour.
Then we should all do the dishes together, just to remind us that we can accomplish something.