Harvest Time

Happy fall everyone! When I think of fall, I think of jeans and long sleeved shirts, of colorful maple leaves and bright orange pumpkins of all sizes. I think of Indian corn and hay rides, plaid shirts and cool weather. We are blessed in Minnesota with the grace of having four distinct seasons. Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall. (Or two seasons if you refer to them as road construction and snow plows...) Here, It's just summer and winter. The temperatures in the mornings have become fairly pleasant, hovering around 20°C (68°F), which, relatively speaking is chilly enough for a light sweater and jeans. By about 11am though, the sun starts blaring down and by 5 or 6pm, it's 34°C (93°F). I do my best to hide inside when it gets that hot. By 10pm, the temps have gone back to a more comfortable temperature, though still not as cool as in the morning, and overnight, the cycle starts all over again. 

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!