It's Harvest Time Again
by Sissy Freeborn

People here call it the "gathering in" and we take it seriously. The kids will be let out of school to work on the harvest. The men and boys will be in the fields harvesting each crop as it ripens. We women folk break out the jars and canning equipment. I have already started to can things. It is a big production line where several families (mothers and daughters) join in doing the canning and everybody shares in the result. But it will be the food we need for winter. Once we get paid for the crops, that is all the money we have for the winter. Even the mill shuts down, till spring's rains fill the streams again and turn the water wheel. This year I, and my women friends, will be canning tomatoes and pears, peaches and plums, green beans, peas, pickles, applesauce. We make sauerkraut, vinegar and catsup. We will trade some of our canned goods for other ladies' canned corn and such. If it is a hard winter, we may be hungry before spring. So, we make sure the larder is as full as we can. Frank will hopefully shoot a deer. (Once, we used to salt it; but, now we can freeze it.) Also, before the Winter comes, Frank will go out on Parsnip Lake and catch some fish. Then, he'll stop by the post office, where the postmaster, in his spare time runs the local smokehouse, and will have the fish smoked. I don't know how I will handle this Winter, because I get so tired these days. This will be my first year in a wheelchair. It seems every year my MS rips a piece of me away and I can't do as much as I did last year. Frank and I will sit out on the back porch and watch the stars come out. He is like a comfortable chair --someone you can curl up with. (You ladies know what I mean!) I feel so good and safe with him, that I fall asleep in his arms in the evening. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night feeling so afraid, till I see his form and then I snuggle close. His arms enfold me, even as he sleeps. When he is by my side the worry monsters don't scare me, as much late at night, when the world is quiet and so dark. I know, by now in my life, that I will never be rich, glamorous or famous ...unless my book gets published ;-). But I never wanted those things. I have had a hard life with more pain, than most, and now my MS. But I will not let it win...ever. I have learned that you must plant more than the seeds you can see, but also those you cannot. In my Valley, we have planted, next to the peas and corn, the seeds of love and kindness and of faith and the wise reap them in. Frank and I will plant a new field next year. If you stop by, we will share in that unseen harvest. And that will make us all what God wants us to be .... Happy!