The Soul of The Harvest: A Farm's Lesson in Resilience and Letting Go

A collage of rustic life showcases a blend of family moments and nature's bounty. In the top left, two people pose happily in front of a tractor loaded with branches. The top middle image captures a serene path shaded by tall trees, where a family strolls together. On the top right, a child examines a container brimming with freshly harvested nuts. The bottom left presents a close-up of dried wildflowers, with the bottom middle offering a view of a tractor against a tranquil sunset. Lastly, the bottom right displays delicate blossoms, capturing the essence of rural beauty and simplicity.

The sunlight arrives later now and scurries into darkness long before the work of the farm is done. The rain is scarce. The leaves fall and the vibrancy of grass fades into the monotone. Fatigue works its way into my bones, and I remember.

The Memory of Harvest

Long drives through the seemingly never-ending roads of the panhandle, crossing over into Alabama. Home, of sorts—I was born there. Roads littered with brown fallen leaves stretching between flanking fields of cotton, the contrast of white puffs atop dark brown foliage.

Picking up pecans with my Grandaddy. Years later, back in Florida, picking them up with my Mama. Then with my husband and girls in the same spot where his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents picked them up before us.

Allen and I would both pull the bottom of our shirts up and fill the fold with freshly gathered pecans. The girls would turn to look at us and laugh—because Allen and I were exactly the same, filling our shirt folds with pecans in the same way. Made for each other.

Gathering pecans, just as our family has done for generations, filling our shirt folds with the spoils of the day.

Then Annie and Bub came along and it was a favorite past time of yet another generation. The work of your hands producing a harvest, no matter what age, and the meditation of our hearts-grateful.

Everything is simple on days like that.

The smell of leaves and beds of pine straw. The organic life underneath—the best aroma on earth. Soil and life. All of the smells that, for a lifetime, draw humans in toward the decay, turning into food for new life in so many ways.

Harvest time ending for the peanuts. A year's worth of work produced, picked, dried, and put away.

What Resilience Actually Means

You cannot be resilient for the future if you do not acknowledge what you have already accomplished. What the seasons have brought across the span of a lifetime and what they have taken away.

Resilience. Adaptation.

These are spoken of as some of the greatest characteristics of the most successful people and endeavors of all time. When everything changes and the world becomes unfamiliar, the ability to look around and acknowledge that some things we thought we needed are gone—then to take inventory of what remains and what's new, and adapt.

Pivot.

To know the world is not ending, but that exciting opportunities lay ahead if you'll do the courageous thing and embrace the change. To know that harvest in some seasons is traditional and familiar, and in others it's an exciting re-invention. A problem-solving courage that finds a new way to understand harvest itself, and what you're harvesting.

For us now, it looks like screened, tested, aged, dark rich organic compost. Embracing a new kind of growing season. This is the work that is done and the value that is created. This is what have stored for the winter season.

This is our new kind of harvest. Screened, tested, dark rich organic compost-the resource we have stored for the coming season.

What the Trees Know

Quite often, fall into winter looks like death and dying. Like great loss.

But the resilience lesson for us—especially for those of us inhabiting the space of this century-old farm in a new way—isn't really about loss. It's strategy.

A tree isn't dying. It's conserving energy. Letting go of the leaves that cost too much to maintain so it can protect its core.

True resilience is knowing what to release—what to stop spending energy on—to survive the hard season.

We too have had to learn this. We are learning to let go of the noise—the fake profiles, the opinions, the harassment, the judgments. We are focusing our energy on the core: the farm, our family, our truth.

The leaves have to fall so the tree can live.

The Invisible Work

The lesson of the soil is about unseen preparation.

For the soil, spring doesn't begin in March. It begins now.

Fall is when the invisible work happens. The leaves break down. The microbes in the compost windrows feast. The soil regenerates—all in quiet, all out of sight.

Resilience is the unseen, unglamorous preparation you do today for a future you believe in.

We seem like radicals, but this is the way of the seasons. The way of the almanacs. The way of our great-grandparents. They put their trust in the cycle. They knew that even after a hard harvest or killing freeze, the soil was quietly preparing for a comeback.

This is what we are doing now on this farm: the unseen work of rebuilding, repairing, renewal, reimagining. Of resurrection.

Dying to self to live anew.

We are trusting the process and the regenerating of our resources.

Witnessing the 'invisible work' firsthand: our compost windrows on a foggy morning, gently steaming as millions of microbes contribute to the health of our soil. Surrounded by the timeless beauty of grandaddy oaks, this scene embodies our commitment to regenerative agriculture and the continuous improvement of our farm's ecosystem.

The Soul of the Harvest

The soul of the harvest isn't the crop.

The outcome is never really the thing. It's the moments. The wisdom the cycles and seasons give you.

The love and laughter of family gathered around the table. Kids playing in fallen leaves. Pecans gathered in the fold of your shirt because you're alike.

Fall on the farm teaches us that resilience isn't bouncing back.

It's a three-part act:

    1    Acknowledging what you've built

    2    Releasing what no longer serves you

    3    Pivoting toward the future you know is coming—the new life of spring

The Legacy

That's the legacy of this farm.

Not a crop yield to be forgotten across the generations, but the thing you build together—from the platforms of our parents and grandparents. From the songs of praise. From the gratitudes of each day turned back to the sky as Holy offering.

By this we build a feeling of belonging: one to another, each to the season they are in, celebrating it all—especially all of those messy human parts that make the renewals and transformations so very delicious and appealing.

The leaves are falling.

The soil is preparing.

The invisible work is happening.

We are not dying. We are conserving our energy for what comes next.

We are letting go of what costs too much to maintain.

We are protecting our core.

This is resilience.

This is the way of the seasons. This is the way forward.

This is our story of resilience, but we know we're not alone. We'd love to hear yours.

What does this season of 'letting go' mean to you? Share your own story of resilience in the comments below.