Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;
Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze;
By and by the harvest, and the labor ended,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Refrain
Though the loss sustained our spirit often grieves;
When our weeping’s over, He will bid us welcome,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Refrain
Because we are in the midst of harvesting, this hymn has been stuck in my head all week. It’s a good hymn to sing while working. The tempo, melody, and words are conducive to labor. This hymn is not in our hymnal. I know it because back when we lived on Bridge Street when I was young, our piano was in the basement and on that piano there was The Family Book of Favorite Hymns by Arthur Austin, Illustrated by George Louden, Jr., Copyright 1950, and that was one of the hymns in it. I still have the book, battered, without a cover, and falling to pieces. I remember my Grandma Rathfon sitting at that piano and playing hymns from that book, including that one, and singing as she played. I loved to hear her play. She played slowly and rolled all her chords. And she had a beautiful voice. So while I picked tomatoes and corn and dug potatoes last week, in my mind I was bringing in the sheaves. The Amish here bind their wheat and oats in sheaves and I love to see a field full of them. I don’t plant any crops that need to be bound in sheaves, not yet anyway, maybe next year.
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| Bringing in the Sheaves in The Family Book of Favorite Hymns. |
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| Sheaves at an Amish farm near Ulysses. |
For most of the week I was a slave to tomatoes. Day after day, all day long, I had them cooking. The kitchen was like a tomato scented sauna filled with steam from the cook pots and the canner. As the week wore on, I got lazy. I grew tired of chopping, peeling, and seeding tomatoes. Then our mill broke and eliminated the last reason for even trying. From then on, I just cored them, chopped them up and put them straight into the pots – peels, seeds, and all. I did a bit of research to try and justify my laziness and discovered some interesting things. Many tomato aficionados say that when making sauce, you need not and should not remove the skin and seeds. According to the experts, the gel-filled seed cavities inside the tomato are the part of the fruit highest in glutamate proteins, the substances that give tomatoes their rich umami taste. And 98% of the flavanols, antioxidants linked to lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other age-related complications, are found in the skin of the tomato. So there, no more fussing over milling out the skin and seeds. By the time I was done reducing and blending the sauce, the skins had disintegrated and the seeds don’t bother me anyway. Skipping that part of the process makes making sauce a lot easier, which I appreciate because there are still a lot of tomatoes out there. We are not nearly done canning tomatoes.
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| Cooking tomatoes. |
Monday and Tuesday were mostly rainy which was a blessing in several ways. First, we needed the rain. Although things are getting better, we haven’t fully recovered from the dry weeks we had through most of the summer. Our creeks and rivers are still running very low. Second, the rain removed the temptation to forsake the kitchen and work outdoors. I would have happily traded hours of boiling tomatoes for hours of weeding but for the rain.
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| A sunrise last week. |
On Wednesday the weather cleared and it was beautiful as only a summer day after rain can be. My walk that morning was through a world washed clean of dust and sparkling with wetness. I began processing tomatoes extra early hoping to have some time later in the day to be out in the garden. I finished a batch of sauce at noon, cleaned up, put away all the canning paraphernalia for the day, and went out to the big garden. I ignored the row of tomatoes. I’m sick of them. I walked past the onions and potatoes. They are ready to pull, but the ground was too damp. They would have to wait. When I came to the strawberry row, I could see lots of ripe berries. I got a bowl and filled it. The aroma of warm, ripe strawberries is one of the most mouth watering smells I know of. Then I had to decide what to do with them. I considered just freezing them, that would have been easy, but no, I decided to make jam instead. So out came all the canning paraphernalia again and I spent the rest of the afternoon standing in the hot kitchen again, making two batches of jam. They turned out great and it was worth it, but I was sorry to miss out on those hours I could have spent in the garden.
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| Wednesday morning. |
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| End of summer strawberries. |
I went out on Thursday morning and picked the last of the cucumbers. The vines, as it usually happens, died off suddenly. I got one last bucketful for one last batch of relish. I also picked more tomatoes, but by then I was so weary of processing them, I only picked one bucketful. I processed it as quickly as I could so I had time to do other things in preparation for the weekend and company. I mowed the lawn and worked in the garden trying to make it look as tidy as I could – not so easy a task this late in the summer when the weeds are rampant and everything is top-heavy and falling over. Our weekend guests are the Murrays, our niece Kailie and her husband Ian. They arrived that night and will be here until tomorrow.
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| We're finally seeing Monarch caterpillars in the milkweed. |
Friday morning I canned relish, the last batch of the year, a milestone in the harvest and canning calendar. In the afternoon a group went up to Watkins Glen. I didn’t go. It meant too long in the car and a long hike up to the top of the glen. I stayed home and did some garden work. On Saturday we took it easy. We stayed close to home. We spent the day doing ordinary things. We had Amish donuts for breakfast. We played games. Stacey took over processing tomatoes for the day, which I appreciated. I spent a couple of hours tending my flowerbeds. In the afternoon we got out our instruments and had a little jam session. It was a laid back sort of day. Kurt and Julie’s daughter Kale and her family left that morning. When the Murrays leave tomorrow, the last of our summer guests will be gone.
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| Playing games. |
So here we are, a few days into September already. Now things will start winding down for a while. The harvest will continue but at a slower pace as the crops die off. The flowerbeds will thin out as the annuals finish their brief and glorious life. It’s time to let things go to seed. I’ll gather seeds from the marigolds and sweet peas to plant in the spring. I’ll shake out the seeds of larkspur and nigella in the places where I hope to see them next year. It’s sad to bid farewell to them. They put on a good show, but it’s time for them to rest. I’m sure before the month is out we will have had a frost or two – we almost had one Friday morning when the temperature dropped to 36°. After the frost comes, I’ll begin the hard work of clearing everything away. The compost pile will triple in size as we consign the remains of pea vines and bean stalks, onion tops and pepper plants to the heap to rot away and bring nourishment to another year’s garden. I love the completeness of the cycle as it turns from seed to soil and back again.
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| A dewy dahlia. |
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| Another. |
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| And another. |
It’s overcast today and we even had some light rain this morning. Even in the subdued light of the cloudy sky the late summer world looks lovely. As we drove to and from church I reveled in the untended and wild places where the goldenrod is at its best. In the garden the cosmos and phlox are still vibrant. These are sunflower and dahlia days delighting us with their dazzling blooms. The bed of carnations I planted is my favorite thing in the garden right now. I pick a fragrant bouquet of them every few days to bring into the house. I know their days are numbered and it makes them even more precious to me.
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| A sunflower in my garden. |
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| Another sunflower in my garden. |
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| A field of sunflowers down the road from us. |
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| Carnations from my garden. |
We’re home from church now, contemplating what to have for lunch. I’m hungry enough that just about anything sounds good. Except tomatoes. This evening we’ve been invited over to Shillig’s for a Sabbath Soiree. Tomorrow, Labor Day, we’ll have a traditional cookout. Then September will forge ahead and summer will wane and we will keep on with the harvest for as long as we can, rejoicing as we bring in our sheaves. Good Sabbath.
