Pumpkin, golden yellow, reds, copper brown color the ground as the leaves make their way down to create fall’s quilts-the ground covering. It is gently stitched together by wind, rain and animals. Accented with acorns, gumballs, pine cones, pods and dried slender pine needles. When you walk the ground crunches and crackles underfoot…twisting my shoes and ankles into odd configurations. The smell of a wood burning fireplace- pop, spark, sputter and flames of fall colors flare up and warmth comes out. Gathering wood in the yard, piling up kindling and bigger logs near the door.
Today is a great day to gather; windy, cool day, the kind you keep a sweater on or a blanket close by you. This is a day to bake something pumpkiny, made from scratch, like my mammy did it. She gathered eggs from the hen house in her basket or sometimes her worn white apron enveloped them. Fresh milk from early morning, then butter churned from it’s cream, stamped and pressed into beautiful shapes. A fresh pumpkin from the late fall garden, pecans picked off the ground and cracked after dinner. Mixed by hand and poured into the old worn black and brown pan and into the wood stove it goes. No timers…just instinctive internal clocks that tell you when to check it. Her hands, fingers that are cracked and wrinkled, manicured by hard work on the farm, wrap a warm dishtowel around the pan, clink, onto the stove top to cool. Organic, pure, fresh food like God intended it to be.
I loved that farm in the fall, trees huge and tall like mountains dotted the land up and down the long dirt driveway. Fruit trees and summer crops resting in the cooler weather. Fall’s harvest of wheat, pumpkins, late squash and anything that would pop up in the cool breezes of the season. Bacon and pork drying and curing in the smoke house-the smell like smoke, salt, meat, earth, after a fire all at once. Thick, meaty bacon hanging from the wooden rafters waiting to be placed in the big black iron fry pan, and savored by all of us.
My sweet mammy bought my first electric typewriter, and gave it to be before I left for college at 17, it was quite a surprise. Ironic her gift to me put words onto white sheets of paper then and here I am half a century old putting into words how she lived. It was always a harvest there on that expanse of land, sky as far as you could see with no interference. Always plenty at every meal, grace first, and a chapter of the bible read at the end of every single evening meal. Always.
Fall, harvest, football, school, new supplies and lunch boxes ( my favorite), plaid skirts and cardigans, loafers and corduroy pants, Thanksgiving and family—all of it falls into the season. A season of grace and bounty…then and now.
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