🍎The Harvest is Complete

Oct 11

90 years


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We have officially finished harvest! Hip, hip, hooray! Growing up on a grain farm in the prairies, the completion of harvest was always a much anticipated and celebrated time. We would enjoy a special family meal topped off with root beer floats. Now as an adult, the anticipation is more about seeing my husband a little more than it is about pop and ice cream in a cup! Harvest started off many months ago with the picking of strawberries in June. Now, so many months later, the last apple is off the tree and we can breathe easier knowing the crop is safely put away.

There is still much work to be done. We are packing apples and pressing apple juice. The fields need to be cleaned out and the old plants tilled under, adding organic matter to the soil. Irrigation hoses need to be rolled up and grass needs to be mowed. And, of course, the rest of the pumpkins need to be picked! That is where you come in; our pumpkin patch tractor rides run every Wednesday to Sunday from 10am - 4:30pm. Take a ride through the orchard and get dropped off in the pumpkin patch where you can snap photos, choose the pumpkin of your dreams and make family memories. Then when you are through, catch a ride back to the market to warm up with a mug of hot apple cider.

I’m so thankful for how each season brings its own set of joys, anticipations and work to do. In the spring when we are planting, there is so much hope that the year will go smoothly and the crops will be bountiful. And then at this time of year, when the harvest is complete and we are looking back on all that has happened there is thanksgiving for the bounty that we were blessed with. There is also a feeling of relief that the crop is safely out of the elements. Just last night the sky was filled with lightning and a stiff wind blew through, but I was able to just relax and watch the show in the sky without worrying about the wind knocking apples off the trees or of the potential of hail. However, mixed with these feelings is an insatiable desire for spring to come so that we can do it all again ….or at least that’s how we’ll feel by February. This is what it means to be a farmer.

Rachel, For the Family