What was on my mind this month? I love this place.
October closes out tomorrow and this time of year makes me feel reflective, nostalgic, and a little homesick.
For as long as I can remember October makes me want to leave. I remember driving to work in high school and thinking, What if I just keep going? Instead of going to work, I wanted to keep driving with no set destination, no return date. This time of year usually sparks that wanderlust, but this year I didn’t feel it. Not a drop.
A phrase popped up across my socials a few years ago: Create a life that you don’t want to take a vacation from. That’s been at the heart of a lot of decisions we’ve made. All of those steps have accumulated and I find a growing desire to stay home. Now I’m prioritizing being home—especially at golden hour—to watch the bright mosaic of autumn leaves light up. My October mantra has switched to, What if I just stay home?
light in the evenings isn’t light
it’s a blinding shine
trees smile in flames
lichen move in their unmoving way
and the day closes
I forget how quickly the fading light changes my routines. The shorter days challenge me. In the next few weeks, I intend to make the most of it with an evening around the firepit, sketching, reserving our next livestock, and walking in the woods more.
This month I’ve been feeling all the feels for home and mapping a vision for the future. I hope to prioritize routine time off at home next year. I’m thinking of starting a dedicated grain garden (which I’ve experimented with in small spaces). An expansion to the tea garden, which would also include relocating some of my hives to another part of the property to start another apiary. These changes are efforts to manage the colonies more aligned with how honey bee colonies naturally space themselves (more on that in a future post).
I feel a sacredness when I’m home, in the woods, in the garden. Who would I be without this place? When we moved in to our current home almost 10 years ago, I had no interest in beekeeping, gardening, or raising our own food. The land opened those possibilities. I felt a duty to move in the direction of these things because of our home. It’s pushed, surprised, and inspired us.
Nearly a decade here has given us the sounds of bees humming while they make honey. I harvested lion’s mane from a maple for breakfast, sipped hickory-nut chai, made hickory nut cookies, and milk. I drank maple sap for my maple syrup experiment. Picked fruits from the cherry dogwood, beautyberry bushes, autumn olives, and blackberry bushes. A peacock spent a weekend with us. A river otter ran down the creek. A mama deer left her fawn in our care, curled up by our front door. I found goats in the street. I love this place.
Trees surrender now
and we marvel at their bright
underbelly flames.
This is absolutely beautiful. I, too, love autumn and the love that my home embraces me in.