Delicious autumn!

I’ll start and end this post with quotes appropriate to this transition between seasons ...

"The season for enjoying the fullness of life ― partaking of the harvest, sharing the harvest with others, and reinvesting and saving portions of the harvest for yet another season of growth."
― Denis Waitley

Another season has past us by.  Summer is gone and the hint of fall is in the air.  Cooler evening temperatures and the beginnings of color in the leaves.  Light breaking the dawn a little later each day and the sun setting just a few minutes earlier each evening.

My 10 week fall CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) started this first day of autumn.  Red leaf lettuce, arugula, green beans, ripe golden and red tomatoes, and baby bok choy filled my basket.  Autumn is a time for harvest, for provisioning for the winter, for sharing the bounty of the summer season.

The equinox happens when the equator passes the center of the sun. This is when the north and south poles of the Earth are not tilted towards or away from the sun, as at other times, but are aligned so as to give, theoretically, the same amount of daylight in both of the Earth's hemispheres.  The word equinox is derived from the Latin, meaning equal night.  The pagan festivities around this event were replaced on the Christian calendar with Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, which is celebrated on the 29th of September.

Plans for my thru-hike next year continue, but the pace has slowed.  This time of year is about celebration and festivals and the harvest.  

Last weekend I volunteered at the Hoppin John Bluegrass and Fiddler’s Convention, enjoying musicians young and old and sampling eleven Hoppin John recipes in this 9th annual fall tradition.  

This coming weekend I’ll volunteer and help with setup and preparations for the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance, building dance floors, erecting the main stage, setting up large dance tents, and cleaning the outdoor kitchen.  Hard work, but more fun than anything - a spirit of community with others anticipating a great fall festival.

The first weekend in October I have a backpack planned to test out gear, new hiking boots, and trail recipes.  October 8-11th is a time of relaxing and enjoying the cooler fall days at the Shakori Hills farm with music, great food, community and friends.

Summer is gone, and autumn has just begun ...

“The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

― George Eliot