The trees are still quite green, though I did see some in Madrid a week and a half ago that had some brown mixed in. But no brilliant oranges, yellows, or reds. It seems as though they just turn from green to brown and then fall to the ground. Once in a while, I see some crunchy leaves on the sidewalk outside my apartment building and I will admit that I do go out of my way to step on them...almost as if I were five years old again.
I was reminded today that it is fall. How? Not by my calendar or by the temperature, but by the simple fact that a farmer in a John Deere tractor was harvesting his fields this morning when I made the commute to school. I live in a suburb of Toledo, about 8km from the old part of the city where my school is, and every day on the bus ride to school, we pass a small stretch of farmland. I don't know what he was harvesting, but it was golden yellow, the color of wheat or a dried up cornfield. And it made me think of all my friends at school who grew up on farms, who go home on weekends in the fall to help harvest their family's fields. Through these friends, I've learned more about agriculture in the past three years than I ever imagined I would know. About crops and livestock, about which tractor brand is better and why, about fertilizers and irrigation systems. About FFA, 4-H, and so much more. And through them, I have come to truly appreciate the honest, hard work that they do every single day of the year so that the rest of us may have food on our table. So if any of you are reading this, short and sweet though it may be, this post is for you. Happy Harvest!
