The leaves begin to thin imperceptibly at the start of October, the pace quickening as the month passes, until one powerful storm, often the first week or two of November, scatters all to the ground. In their leaving, stark shapes out of myth and folklore will walk the forest, stand as watchful sentinels in the middle of a pasture. It is a beautiful transformation.

While each month is an ending, in fall and winter it is felt most keenly. Spring and summer, by contrast, are seasons of abundance, filled with work that is characterized by restraining the energies of nature, channeling it for productive needs that we desire. They are a time of growth, wild and teenaged, that without pruning (and sometimes with) overwhelms. Days are filled with hours of mowing and harvesting, sowing and planting. Sunlight lingers deep into the evening, long after the will to do more has flagged.

Then the seasons turn. Starting with the falling of the leaves, the farm shifts to maintaining and maintenance. There is new life, still — garlic and onions planted in October, lambing midwinter, greens in the hoop house, potatoes sown in February. But the time has come for clearing fence rows, cutting back old-growth vines and spent plants, repairing hay barns and other outbuildings.

Now begins the practical time of the year, less driven by the need to simply keep up and more molded by catching up. Which is perhaps why farmers traditionally speak of fall and winter as slower. The workload doesn’t lessen, but the character of the labor changes fundamentally. It is more structural, both literally and figuratively; with hands to the saw and mind released from the routine and endless sunlight, one can focus more on the process and life.

That my father passed away three weeks ago, and my stepmother joined him last night, finds me a bit more introspective than usual this season. Farming has shifted my appreciation and understanding of the cycles of life; it also, hopefully, has made me more accepting of certain inevitable changes that life brings to us all. It has, and I hope this is understood, made me appreciate more deeply the devoted care that my sisters Kathryn and Laura gave to both parents over the past eight years. To my way of thinking, they husbanded well their charges, with attention and love, then let them go graciously when the time arrived.

That both parents departed as summer ended and fall began is a gift to use. One that can shape the work to come: help me mend what I have and prepare for the new life that while already growing dormant is also readying for rebirth.

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Reading this weekend: The Shepherd’s Calendar (J. Clare), which might simply be the most beautiful poem by one who knew. And for the second time, The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien), because I am in need of a journey and a heroic saga.

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