Winter Wheat

Winter fields. Yellow, hollow wisps of the remnants of harvest in tufts amongst the blowing, ever changing snow drifts.

The fields of the semiarid Midwest desperately try to retain the moisture that will help to bring life to seeds not yet planted; the seeds laying safe in the barns, weighed and measured ready for planting when the winter has finished her ravaging. 

Not all the frozen fields are waiting, however. In the fields that were plowed unseasonably, broadcast with wheat kernels, something is sluggishly stirring beneath the crusted snow. 

Winter wheat. 

 

It is planted after the harvests are gathered and stored. It is flung out into forgotten fields while the land still retains a little warmth from the waning sun, and then is left to itself to endure the bleak chill of winter. While its sister wheat has been harvested and safely rests, the winter wheat hardens itself. It snuggles down into the frozen earth waiting for momentary thaws and fresh white moisture to descend. 

Despite the long days of winter winds, small green sprouts begin to appear. Roots anchor the stunted plants to the soil and then when the season begins to change and the skies, steely cold, begin to warm, the wheat begins to grow in earnest. Then the unseasonable harvest beings. 

 

The winter wheat is harvested in late spring or early summer. 

The kernels are few and pithy, small and hard, and yet packed with the stuff of life. It will yield the proteins that will make our bread nourishing, and the gluten that will provide beautiful loaves and dainty cakes. 

 

Simple, energy packed grains will cross oceans to feed the hungry of the world. 

A desirable, rich harvest brought about by cold drought, thawing and freezing, forcing the kernels through the devastating winter that has brought about this amazing heartiness that the final milling has released.

Winter Wheat

by Kat Cavanaugh LaMantia for Melanya

The pumpkins are carved

The apples are picked

Fields gleaned of their goodness

are quiet as an empty womb

They whisper even at rest, "Fill us"

Those obedient first fruits are content,

the ones who fell as seed from hands

newly come from April's sunrise prayer,

fully ingathered now and bursting with

summer vitality

The empty fields do not call

to such delicate seed to be filled

They beckon to the hard-shelled,

Johnny-come-latelies who slept through

spring rains and abstained from the

glorious summer sun

"Fill us" they call as the days

shorten and the ground chills

There is bounty saved for these

late hours where frost sings

your beauty to life-

where December celebrates Christ's nativity and your own

You are the second spring whose

holy bread all the long winters of this world

have waited for

The Arrival of Autumn...

We Alaskans have a moment of panic in August as the fireweed begins to turn to fluff and the days begin their decent into longer nights. Winter is on its way! The cold, the ice, the darkness will soon be upon us and we are not ready to surrender our mild temps, green grass and long daylight hours! We go through all the stages: denial, anger, bargaining, etc., and yet we know winter will still come. While we are busy resisting the onset of winter, we (as in me) forget there is that most lovely of all seasons called Fall, Autumn, Harvest... It arrived this morning.

As I was walking to meet my sister, the skies were a gentle, mottled gray, the ground was wet with rain and the air was mild. Perfect walking weather. I unsuspectingly passed a tall evergreen tree just as gust of wind swept down and showered me with drops of remnant rain from the said tree, swirled yellow leaves around my head and carried the distant sound of honking geese to my ears. I honestly laughed out loud! Fall had arrived in one lovely, sensory filled gust of wind, and I was glad!

There are few events in life I do not look forward to, but the winter of old age is one I do not embrace with enthusiasm . The reality of achy bones, thinning hair, and moments of ebbing energy cause me to panic somewhat. I begin to consider dying my gray, joining a health club, buying one more youth preserving supplement in an effort to put off entering that winter too soon. However, I am so thankful for the reminders that the Autumn of my life is TRULY amazing! A camping trip with grandsons, Julian and Miles,

 


a birthday party for Jentry, and the gender revealing of a little girl due in mid winter (congrats Kristen, Josh and Jentry).


 


Add to this the glow of a daughter who is expecting a bundle of joy in February (congrats Jolene and Michael) and I am ecstatic!  

How do I forget in my worry of winter, how lovely fall can be?
 
    
  I squander the last few days of summer imagining a world of white cold (which I'll find just as beautiful as summer when I'm in sitting in my cozy chair with tea and a book) when I could be reveling in the warm slanted rays of waning sunshine. My Autumn years should be spent reveling in the harvest of my younger years instead of counting gray hairs and envisioning my old age (which I'll find lovely when I'm sitting in my chair with a book and a cup of tea).

Today I am finding myself joyful in the arrival of Autumn!

"For every thing there is a season..." Solomon the Preacher