A Harvest of Words
by the Communications Team
Harvest
by John Atwater
As we shift deep into fall and go towards winter, we have the gift of the harvest. What we have planted, watered and tended to has grown and is ready to be collected. The work is rewarded.
As the year draws towards a close, we can see how our plans have come about. It is a good time to reflect on the year; what has worked out, what we have learned.
As trees let go of their leaves it can be a time for us to let go of what no longer serves us as well. We can get ready for a new year and new possibilities.
Harvest the results of the work of the year, and decide what seeds to plant for the next. Let go of what no longer serves us, and choose what we wish to embrace for the New Year.
The Harvest
by Mara Pennell H.W.
I come from farm people, specifically in the hills of Kentucky. Because of this I do understand the concept of the harvest. I spent summers on the family farm, just outside the tiny town of Edmonton, Kentucky, where generations of my family have farmed.
The summer was all about preparing for the harvest come fall. My cousins were tobacco farmers and dairy farmers. Tobacco was a good cash crop and they were doing very well for themselves in the 1960’s. With the Tennessee Valley Authority, they were even able to put in indoor plumbing. It beat the heck out of the old outhouse. The prepping in the house was all about cooking and freezing food. The food was very important because the farmers worked together in the area to help each other. Because of this, you had a crowd to feed when it was your farm. It was an early lesson in group dynamics. The farm lives tried to make sure they prepared the tastiest food as a thank you, each trying to outdo the others. It was a serious business. But everyone helped everyone.
So the entire summer was about planting and growing and prepping food - freezing or cooking it and freezing it. Then there were the daily chores of collecting eggs, feeding the horses, and milking cows. The good news was my cousin Odell had installed those new-fangled milking machines, so at least that was an easier job than it might’ve been. Nothing busier than preparing for the harvest. The chores were like a deluge of rain, or grain if you are a farmer.
But to me, the harvest has a much broader meaning. It is a time of receiving, a part of the reciprocal action of life. And it doesn’t necessarily happen in the autumn. It happens when a project is completed, a book is finished or a house has been built. One moves from acting to allowing, now
that you have the harvest - the grain, the money, the house, the book, comes the after time. Because, then after the harvest is completed, comes a much needed rest. A rest to restore the energy one expended. Because the proverbial spring approaches in just a few short months and the cycle begins again. We will begin planting our seeds for the next harvest. It is reciprocal. It is about growth and direction, giving and receiving, doing and allowing. Plant – grow - harvest - rest. Spring - Summer - Autumn - Winter. The cycle of life.
Soul Harvesting
by Pam Rodolph H.W., M.
I had very little (in fact, no) experience in my life with farming or anyone involved in it. So I can’t say whether or not it’s a peaceful life. I did, however, buy a print in Illinois from an Amish farmer once. It showed a 2- dimensional painting of a family in a buggy rolling by under a full, bright,
enlarged, ole yellow moon. I hung that picture in my apartment and used it multiple times to seek out peace, to harvest nothing at all but quiet. It helped me focus. Even now, peace spreads over me as I think about it. What I would not have expected is that the majority of farms are still small, family-owned businesses. And I like that idea. In investigating the idea of “harvest”, I learned a few things about corn also:
1. One bushel of corn will sweeten more than 400 cans of Coca-Cola.
2. Corn was first domesticated in southern Mexico over 10,000 years ago.
3. Corn is considered a vegetable, a grain, and also a fruit.
4. One last fun piece of farming and harvesting advice: If you want to know if it’s about to rain, check the exterior of your agricultural equipment. If the metal is accumulating condensation, rain is on the way. However, that is not strictly true in Oklahoma as we have a great deal of humidity. Other signs of imminent precipitation include chickens hiding their heads under their wings and hogs beginning to tussle in their pens.
After moving onto five acres with horses, dogs, cats, and chinchillas, rainfall ceased to be a pleasant interruption to my day. There is always something to worry about if rain is coming. During hail, the horses won’t go into the barn as the noise is too loud. If they can get to them, however, they will
stand under trees with their backside pointed towards the rain. In Oklahoma, rain seldom drops straight down. I sometimes have to worry about rain filling up my septic tank and backing up into the house. I have had to worry about getting enough rain so hay prices won’t go sky high, or for the grass to be burnt up and not available for the nutrients horses can’t get any other way. One spring, it rained for 30 days in a row. The rain was so hard and constant, baby birds were drowning in their nests. Many were completely washed out of their nests first. The weeds in my back pasture were over my head with me sitting on my horse. A neighbor and I used a 45-hp tractor to cut it down, breaking six pins in the process. Oh, and then there’s the occasional tornado sweeping down the plains. So, farm life as a peaceful reality is, at best, a romantic whimsy in my mind. But then, what difference does it make what symbols we use to aid us in experiencing peace?
Ordinarily, we think of harvesting as collecting something of value, something life-giving. And in harvesting, let’s say corn, there is a process, the first step, after picking, of which is usually removing some type of armor such as a husk. Then comes further removal of anything unwanted. The product is cleaned and prepared for use. Until that time, for the most part, we have no use for it. We, too, are of no use to anyone until we also undergo the process of harvesting—until we remove our armor, clean and prepare ourselves to receive the harvested bounty freely given to us by Consciousness. And rooting out weeds, as every farmer knows, is a life-long pursuit. However, when a whole field has been cleaned and harvested, there is a quantum of change, a perceptible difference in how we see life, now, and a sense of taming our overall belief systems, our expectations, and demands. Life ceases to disturb us to the point it did before. Clarity of thought comes easier. Doing the right thing comes easier. In essence, we dim the car lights that have us frozen in identification. And that field we cleaned is prepared for the next planting. It will support a different crop next season, which every farmer knows is for the health of the field. But for now, winter is coming and we turn our thoughts to the bleak issues in our minds, operating in the dark for now, devoid of the light that will surely come to root them out once again and make way for the spring and a brand new harvest.
Harvesting Our Love
by Sara Walker H.W.
The longer Patrick and I are together as a couple, the more we are reaping the benefits of our love. This includes learning to communicate better and paying more attention to what’s important to each other now.
We started shacking up together, seventeen years ago--beyond most of our responsibility for children and parents. We were finished with that time of life. To get here we went through many an argument, working through what was triggering us. All this churning, infused with the air from laughing at ourselves, moved us to the butter-gold we searched for... most of the time, anyway. What we shared became the cushion for the difficult times we’ve gone through. Even the tough times--hey, especially the tough ones-- have fostered our growth as a couple.
Like many of us oldsters, we’ve also been accruing pleasure from the wonderful memories of our vacations and celebrations with each other, family, and close friends. We’re a “Golden Years” couple, although not as old as Katharine Hepburn and Henry Ford were in “On Golden Pond”. Like the characters in that movie, we resolved to listen better, expand our trust and restore our relationships. We are gaining perspective, while not reacting much, or at all, to what used to trigger us emotionally; instead, we fill the void with more creativity and humor.
Recently, we’ve been coaxing our inner children (we have more than one each!) to come out and play every day. Every morning we each make up a nickname for the day: “Mr. Pajama Bottom”, when Patrick was wearing them past breakfast; "Miss Cheeky", when I had extra coffee and teased him; “Cat Magnet”, when one of our cats laid on. his legs while the other purred on his chest; "Pippi Longstocking", when I had on blue-and-white striped pants, with calf-length stockings showing below, topped off by my red hair--minus the braids!
We enjoy spotting things on television we can make fun of. We had a side-splitting incident when the America’s Got Talent interviewer, Terry Crews, was on automatic pilot. He held a microphone to the teenage contestant’s mouth, to get his comments after being judged on performing his comedy act. The only problem was we had just seen the kid do comedy by using his portable computer, which was doing all the talking for him. Because the kid couldn’t talk at all! We burst out laughing, watching Terry try to interview him. And Terry didn't catch on right away. Take a...Beat....Beat....Beat.... We gaped at the interviewer's quickly changing expressions, as awareness dawned on him: funny as hell then too! The contestant took it in stride. Last week, Patrick and I tried out a little improv and he did amusing impressions of people from TV--not ready for prime time, but good fun.
In the Autumn of our lives, we're harvesting our relationship: through the joy of unfolding our potential, realizing our regenerative boon, and spreading Our bounty bounty about. In other words, rip-roaring whenever possible.
Nob’s Harvest
By Alex Gambeau H.W.,m.
I am sitting in Vancouver looking out of my window and noticing the beautiful but cold rainy morning. All of the trees are changing color. Well, not all of the trees, as some are pine trees that really don't do much of anything except stay green all year round. I have been living here for about fifteen years now and I realize I still have not experienced a true harvest.
I lived in New Mexico when I was nine, I remember once helping my buddy bail hay and alfalfa for the cattle and the horses they had on their ranch. It was hard work and took us most of the summer to do the job. I don't think I was paid, but they did allow me to ride any horse they had available. Which was a good deal for a nine-year-old who had no horse to ride. This was as close as I got to harvesting anything.
Around the age of ten, my family moved to Torrance, California and my cowboy days were over. I grew up in a state which had no seasons, although it felt like summer most of the time. I rode a bike instead of a horse and got a job selling the paper, the Los Angeles Times.
I must have been around thirty when I met Nob, he was from Northern California . Nob was Japanese. His father had purchased a farm up in Northern California around 1897 and the family started growing sugar beets.. Nob, told me that the sugar beets took the place of sugar cane for making sugar in many places in the world. He also told me beets are harder to care for than sugar cane but you can’t grow sugar cane just anywhere. I believe Nob inherited the farm when his father passed away. When I met Nob, he was working at a construction company in Torrance, taking care of all the small motors and engines, as well as the heavy earth movers, tractors and company trucks.
Nob told me all about sugar beet harvesting. It was hard work done by hand and his farm hired Mexican laborers from across the border in September when the crop was ready to be picked. It was a big deal and had to be done immediately since the sugar beets were ready all at once and required all the hands to pick and gather them before they could rot. This was how the crop was harvested. Nob told me he always had trouble getting enough hands for picking.
After a couple of years of this. Nob got what he thought was a great idea. He decided he needed to build a nightclub on his farm. He thought perhaps he could attract more men to work the fields and that they would stay longer. He also hired some ladies to run the bar. This was probably his big mistake. I’m not quite certain how long this went on, but apparently his wife and two daughters told him it was completely unacceptable and that he had to pack up and get out of the house! Even if he promised to take down the nightclub, he was still tossed out of the house. I’m sure there was more to this story but Nob kept his mouth shut about it. But this was how Nob had come to live in Torrance.
So, except for the hay and alfalfa when I was a child, Nob’s story was as close to harvesting as I ever got. I bet that bar on his farm was quite a place on Friday nights. When I think about it, I realize Nob had quite an adventure. Maybe it would make a great film, a true Hollywood story!