At the edge of the vineyard...

Morning glories: September's chill allows
its trumpet-shaped blossoms to stay open all day long.

Tough love works on the farm too...

This is not the look of the curious.

This is the face of concern.

It is worry. No, it is fear.

This is the root of that fear.

This is the standoff that occurs a few times a day around here.

This is a good thing because the sheep had grown accustomed
to my face and my voice and thus they began to ignore
the boundaries that I had defined for them.

They needed to learn a little respect.

They needed to experience fear.

The power of a simple word...

I have, for the last several months, immersed myself in this thing called farming.

I have met and befriended farmers.

I have dirtied myself with soil.

I have watched, in amazement, as our grapevines have grown from bare clusters of roots into magnificent tangles of fruity potential.

I have bent, and pulled, and stretched, and ached.

I have held fuzzy chicks in my hand and packaged their meat for the freezer months later.

I have learned how to negotiate with sheep.

I have gauged and recorded rainfall.

I have studied the price of diesel fuel.

I have noted the dates when certain fruits and vegetables come in, and go out of, season.

I have conversed about the benefits of properly fitted pruners.

I have composted.

I have preserved.

I have farmed.

And yet, if you were to ask me today what it is that I do, professionally, which is akin to asking me to define my place in the cosmos, the word farm would not fall from my tongue. And this, dear ones, has been my summer epiphany.

Today, I include among my friends, many farmers. And to the farmers nearby, I have earned respect as one who knows a bit about farming, albeit with a very different sort of crop.

Yet, as hard as I tried this summer to become a “farmer,” in this quest I have failed. I am not a farmer. I am a writer. A writer, you see, who happens to live on a farm. The distinction is important...to a writer.

Why must the sun leave so early?

This is my Labor Day sunset. And thus summer, as it is defined by most, comes to a close. Another ending in a year that's brought too many. Oh, how I've grown weary of endings....of saying goodbye.