Come, ye thankful people, come;
Raise the song of harvest home.
All is safely gathered in
Ere the winter storms begin.
God, our Maker, doth provide
For our wants to be supplied.
Come to God’s own temple, come;
Raise the song of harvest home.
Fruit unto his praise to yield,
Wheat and tares together sown,
Unto joy or sorrow grown.
First the blade, and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear.
Lord of harvest, grant that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.
And shall take the harvest home;
From His field shall in that day
All offences purge away,
Giving angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store
In the garner evermore.
Bring Thy final Harvest-home!
Gather Thou Thy people in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin;
There, forever purified,
In Thy garner to abide:
Come with all Thine angels, come,
Raise the glorious Harvest-home!
Today is the Sunday before Thanksgiving and we sang this hymn in church today. I always look forward to singing the Thanksgiving hymns. I only recently discovered that this hymn has more than the two verses printed in our hymnal. I don’t know why they omitted the other verses. Maybe the hymnal editors thought verses three and four were too harsh to be included in a happy thanksgiving hymn. I like them. Having just finished our harvest and looking at the state of the world, I find the idea of the Lord coming to gather the wheat from the tares appealing – but only if I qualify as wheat.
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| A sunset last week. |
Looking at this year’s harvest, I’m very thankful for what we were blessed with. I want to think that “all is safely gathered in ere the winter storms begin,” but I never feel adequately prepared. Winter is a precarious time. Severe summer weather can be dangerous, but severe winter weather seems much worse to me. Blizzards and ice storms and sub-zero temperatures are more frightening to me than thunderstorms or excessive heat – or even hurricanes and tornados since we don’t really get those here. As winter approaches, I always try to imagine the worst that might happen and assess if we are ready for it. The worst winter scenario I can think of is a blizzard or an ice storm that knocks the power out. We could stay warm enough. We can run our gas furnace without electricity. And if we couldn’t use gas, I think we’ll have enough firewood. We’ve laid in a bigger supply than we ever have before. We have warm clothes and extra blankets. We have candles and lanterns and kerosene for light. We have food that we’ve canned and in the freezer, the fruits of our labors, so we won’t starve if we’re careful. Even without power, our frozen food would be okay since it’s often colder outdoors than it is inside the freezer. Water is our biggest concern. Our well pump is electric. If the forecast looks ominous, we always fill the bathtub and every pitcher in the house. We have water stored that can be used to flush toilets, but not to drink. We have a spring just down the road that runs all the time and never freezes if we need to resort to that. But it would be inconvenient.
The chickens wouldn’t fare so well. They’re pretty hardy and can survive cold temperatures. I’ve never heated their coop. I’m trying to stockpile some feed, but no matter what, I’d have to ration it carefully. Again, water would be a problem. I can bring them water from the spring down the road, but without electric heaters, it will freeze pretty quickly. So much to think about! So many conveniences we tend to take for granted! Let’s just hope and pray that winter isn’t going to be severe so we never need to find out whether or not we are prepared enough.
I love Thanksgiving. It’s odd, but when I think back on my childhood, I don’t remember any early Thanksgiving celebrations, at least not the feast part of it. I remember watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on our old black and white television set in the front room in our house on Bridge Street. We never were football watchers and still aren’t so that doesn’t figure in any of my memories. I guess I wasn’t as impressed with the food back then – but that changed. My first memories involving the food came as I grew a little older. When I was a teenager I wanted to learn how to make pumpkin pie and stuffing for the turkey. For many years I was the one put in charge of the turkey. Later, after studying some history and doing some genealogy, I began to focus more on the origins of the holiday. The food is still important, but its place in the celebration has been modified by a bit of historical maturity.
I have several ancestors on my father’s side that came to America on the Mayflower in 1620. There are approximately 35 million Mayflower descendants alive today, so maybe it’s not such a big deal to be one of them. Even so, I still feel awed and proud to be descended from such brave people. The Orwellian re-writers of history today are trying very hard to remove the importance of the Pilgrims and other founders from our country’s history. They tell us, with their keen modern socialist insight, that they were nothing more than genocidal, intolerant, religious fanatics who overran and destroyed a pristine land inhabited by enlightened and peaceful natives. Having read some of the original accounts of the Pilgrims and other early colonists, I know this re-imagining of our history to be false. I admit that the idealized and charming version I was taught as a child is not accurate either. The real story is gritty and complicated. Their lives were hard, filled with danger, starvation, and sickness. Their motives, for the most part, were honorable, seeking a new land where they could live free from oppression and with unbounded opportunity. And their achievement, laying the foundation of the greatest republic the world has ever known, a nation blessed with more freedom and opportunity than has ever existed, is something worth honoring and giving deep, deep thanks for. Those who no longer value that achievement and take it for granted do not know the price that was paid for it. I comprehend only a small part of that price and I thank God for those brave men and women.
Except for a few hours midweek, the week behind us was mostly chilly, windy, and typically November-ish – down into the twenties and teens at night, only in the thirties and forties during the day. The sunshine is deceptive now. Even the brightest days hold little warmth. And the frost comes every night. The chilly weather is still new enough to us that we mind it. It subtly dominates all we do. We tend to sit near the furnace grate and settle near the wood stove without thinking about it. We gravitate to the kitchen when anyone is baking to stand and talk in the heat of the oven. I check the thermometers and the forecast every morning before I dress to determine the number and thickness of the layers of clothing I will put on. And it isn’t even winter yet. The coldest days are still far off in January and February. We will adjust to the cold more as we move further toward the solstice, but not yet.
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| A sunrise last week. |
We had some beautiful sunrises and sunsets last week. Most of them were delicate shades of pink and purple. One of them was fiery orange and red. I love the beauty of the sky as sun rises and sets.
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| A sunset last week. |
We went and got two more loads of firewood, one on Monday, the other on Tuesday. On Wednesday the temperature rose to 50° at midday and I took advantage of the brief warmth to put the garden hose away for the winter while the hose was supple enough to roll up tightly. There has been thick ice on the rain barrel down at the barn several mornings and that prompted me to clean a water bucket to keep in the house. Soon I will be carrying water down to the barn every day.
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| The last load of firewood stacked in the pavilion. |
Thursday we hit 60° in the afternoon and it felt like spring for an hour or two. I was in school that day, but that was fine because I don’t really have anything I need to do outdoors anymore except the daily chores down at the barn. After school I ran some errands. I got a haircut. I bought a load of chicken feed. By the time I got back home, it was dark and back down in the 30s. As I unloaded chicken feed, there was a crisp crescent moon sinking in the west and bright Jupiter rising in the east in a star filled sky. We do have beautiful night skies here, especially during the cold days.
The deer have been foraging freely in the ruins of the vegetable gardens. They like to eat the cabbage stumps. They’ve pulled all the discarded pumpkins out of the compost pile and eaten them. They’ve trimmed back the strawberries, eaten all the old leaves that were sticking out above the winter mulch. I don’t mind them cleaning things up except that they overstay their welcome and think they can come and eat what they want during the growing season too. A few days ago, Miriam saw six does cross the road just after dark up past Shillig’s, headed toward the garden. I’ve never seen them. I just see the evidence they leave behind.
On Friday it rained. It came in the nick of time. The rain barrel down at the barn was almost empty and I was about to retire it for the season, but the rain came and filled it up again. I will wait until the cold makes it impractical to use it anymore to put it away for the winter. It was a chilly rain, but at least it wasn’t snow. More and more the chance for snow keeps showing up in the forecasts, but so far, it hasn’t happened. Looking back through my photographs, I see that often in past years we’ve had snow by now – anything from an inch or two to a foot. I’m thankful that is not the case this year.
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| 2014 |
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| 2018 |
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| 2021 |
On Friday evening we went to an Escape Room held in the library at the Elementary School. Stacey, Miriam, Hannah, our friend Laura Dunn, and I had to solve six puzzles to open six locked boxes to get the final clue. We had one hour to complete it. It took a lot of thinking and trial and error, but we finished with five minutes to spare. Hannah has done escape rooms before, but none of the rest of us had. It was really fun.
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| After the Escape Room. |
Saturday was the usual busy day. Stacey and I spent several hours cleaning over at the farmhouse. Since no one lived there for all those years, it is in need of much care. We pulled out junk from the back mud room, repaired a hole in the floor, mopped and vacuumed floors, and put up some shelves. While we were working, it kept occurring to me that many years ago, close to a hundred actually, that house was the home of my great-grandparents, Theodorus and Anna May Howe. Although their son, my grandfather, was grown up by the time they lived there, it was the house where my great aunts Sarah, Esther, and Eleanor spent their later childhood years. I liked thinking that I was occupying the same space they once lived in. Sometimes the history of these houses, our house here and the farmhouse next door, wells up and fills me with happy associations. Generations connect me to this place.
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| Looking toward home through the orchard at the end of the day. |
Later that afternoon, when I thought all my work for the day was done, Kurt came over and asked Stacey and me to help him. When we harvested potatoes weeks ago I thought we had dug them all up, but Kurt said he’d planted some in places where we hadn’t dug. He used his tractor to scoop up soil and Stacey and I pawed through it to find the spuds. We ended up with two bucketfuls of red and russet potatoes. It was cold work, but it was nice to get my hands into some soil one last time. And it’s nice to have a few more potatoes too. And here I thought we were done with the garden. I think now we really are.
To end the day we had a bonfire and burned all the combustible junk we pulled out of the farmhouse and the last of the garden debris.
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| End of the day bonfire. |
We had a heavy frost this morning. It was 19° degrees when I got up. As I dressed for church I considered putting a layer of thermal under my church clothes, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. It seems too soon. Church was fine. We were supposed to have two visiting speakers from the stake, but only one showed up, so I had to do an impromptu talk. It turned out okay. So we’re home, we’ve eaten lunch, it has warmed up to 45°, and in a few minutes I’m heading down to the barn to do the afternoon chores. This week we will head down to the Thayn’s for our Thanksgiving celebration. That will be a lot of fun. I hope you have a very joyful Thanksgiving.
