Enjoying these Days of Autumn
I learned to love the cool but not cold days of autumn while serving in the military, especially in the morning. You see, growing up in Montana there were three seasons: Winter, Wet (due to the snow melting), and Dry following quickly by winter again. As a child I would watch Charlie Brown’s Halloween and Thanksgiving specials and wonder why the leaves were not buried under a few feet of snow.
My first true autumn was in Morehead, Kentucky while going to school. I truly understood the beauty of the change. But after joining the military I would come to enjoy autumn for a completely different reason. That first chilly morning standing in formation in Ft Riley, KS, I thought I was going to die. For those of you who can’t visualize why this matters let me explain. When the morning temp would drop to below 50 degrees but not 45 the senior NCOs and officers would stand inside drinking coffee looking at the thermometer to determine the uniform of the day. While the lowly Specialist (me) would be standing outside in formation in shorts and a t-shirt, shivering and being yelled at for moving at the position of attention. Right before the sound of the gun and “To the Colors” the NCO and officers would emerge and confirm that t-shirts it is. As soon as we dropped our salute we get moving, and within a few moments I would come to love the autumn. It was the only time of the year that I could run 8 miles without sweating profusely. In fact, it became one of the few things that made running in and out of formation enjoyable. The cool wind in your face, glow of the rising sun and the energy coming from your body was truly invigorating. The only thing that downplayed the moment was the not-quite-so sober dry heaves of the guy next to you and the almost musical profanity of the NCO yelling at you.
As such, I have found that I enjoy working outside during this time, which continues to rekindle those moments in my mind. This last week proved to be no exception. In fact, I was chastised a few times for office work that needed to get done while outside enjoying the cool air.
Despite the chastisement, we accomplished quite a bit. We got our winter wheat crow sown, got our forge out with the kids, and followed up on some animal husbandry work. The charts show we got the seed in the ground just in time, if not the last day possible. Sowing winter wheat is something I have been wanting to do for 2 years, but we haven’t had a piece of ground set aside that could manage it until this year. We dug up the small patch by hand and used our new-to-us seed sowing machine to space the rows and seeds out (Thank you Hope Grows Farms!). There are some things I would do different next time but as a whole it went well. We will see next March how well we did and keep you abreast of that.
After the sowing and animal work which we aren’t yet able to talk about, we pulled out our wood/coal forge and let the kids have a break. They spent all my backup coal and about 6 hours pounding metal enjoying almost every minute. The moments they didn’t enjoy it is when Chris and I had to remind them of safety protocols for forge work. But any day they get to work on metal is enjoyed. I hope you are enjoying your autumn weather and getting out to admire nature, I promise you its worth it. Deven Little
