Transition as the Constant: Fall Veggie Share #1 – Wed. 10/26

Each fall the transition is a little different from the busy summer season into the more mellow fall season. Most years there is a steady transition beginning in October of full time workers who move on to other jobs. For a month of so it’s always someone’s last week of the season. It’s like pulling a bandaid off slowly.

This season, has a little bit of a different feel. Last Friday we still had a full crew on, but it was the last day for 5 folks.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day and the crew enjoyed one another. You could feel a wave of bittersweet rolling from those whose last days it was. They were happy to be done with all the hard physical work, yet sad at the same time. Working outside is a special experience – and one much harder to say goodbye to on a seventy degree day!

The farm sendoff to our summer crew was a sweet one. We had impromptu porch beers after work.  My kids played around in the yard and eventually got bored of watching adults sit around and talk. So they asked us to play Bad Oscar. This was a particularly sweet request, as it was a game created by our farm apprentice, Jared, back in early Covid times with the kids – when all of us only had the farm as our social world. Seeing as it was Jared’s last day after 4 years at Crossroads, it was extra sweet. In the game, Jared hides and then ‘illegally’ moves around, which is why the kids originally called it Bad Oscar; he had cheated. Everyone else looks for Jared and then starts moving around with him in a pack until the whole group comes back together. So in a delicious warm breeze, surround by the ochres and golds of fall, after a ten hour work day in the fields, the whole crew briefly turned into kids and played a yard game.  The sunset, the darkness came, the kids were hungry and the adults were ready to leave. There were hugs, and thank you, and goodbyes. Very sweet.

So now it’s Tuesday, and while a small crew is still on staff, it feels like the bandaid has been cruelly ripped off. It is so very quiet on the farm. I already miss Brook’s sweet Pepper pets, America’s giggle, Grace’s field chat, Oliver’s laughter from their sideways grin, and Jared’s goofiness.

I wonder if this is what teacher’s experiences are like… a simultaneous excitement for the restful season’s arrival, and a sadness of letting go those they’ve been close with all year?  I imagine teachers driving to a lake in June, a little sad to leave their students and pumped that they are about to be by the water. Today, I felt a little melancholy driving away from the farm on the way to hockey, thinking about how quiet things feel all of the sudden. But I was also elated… I was driving to go play hockey at 11am! I was off farm in the middle of a weekday! (It was super fun by the way).

And so it goes… transition after transition. It’s funny, farming is full of of transitions within a given growing season and year, but year upon year things feel so similar.  A layering of transitions.  Knowing each of these transitions and having gone through them so many times helps me know I’ll just keep on going through them and all will be well. It’s like the adage… the only constant is change. Cheers to the arrival of the slow season.

Be well!
We appreciate you.
Farmer Cassie