Harvesting Winter’s Light

It’s fantastic to be on the downhill side of the winter solstice. With the shortest day of the year behind us, there is something about our time in the sunlight getting incrementally longer with each passing day that makes the cold and the snow that much easier to embrace. I always think of this time as moving toward the light. The dark still gets the lion’s share of the day, but time and patience will bring us back into the sunshine soon enough.

The sunny days we had this week were a terrific reminder that the earth’s slow tilt is changing. Walking the wet fields near my home under the big blue sky felt like assessing the aftermath of last night’s party; cut corn stalks popping like stubble through the earth with dried out corn and cob scattered here and there; hop mounds all wet and relaxed lying in their muddy rows under the ever sentinel trellis; apple trees under the knife as they undergo their winter pruning—the tidy orchard rows turning into streams of sticks.

Our Valley ag-land looks deceptively sleepy right now. While it’s true that things slow, they do not stop. A winter farm is similar to a clock. At a glance it looks fairly still, but over time it’s clear that there has been movement. There is much strategy being discussed behind office doors, machinery is repaired and cleaned up, things are built or bought, and plans are laid so that when the dirt is ready, everything is good to go. The pruning in the orchards is the best example.

After a growing season, the trees look as if they have sprouted extra fingers and are raising their hands to the sky. It may seem like the fuller the better when it comes to fruit trees, but there is a true art to pruning, that come spring, will maximize the burst of growth that occurs and channel that energy into the fruit itself, the goal resulting in fewer buds, but a higher quality end product.  It’s patient work, with each type of tree needing to be clipped a little differently, the weather largely uncooperative in its winter gray moodiness.

I love seeing a block midway through pruning. Half the field lanky and unkempt, naked in the heaviness of last year’s growth, side by side with the trimmed and meticulous rows of the freshly pruned where the ground is littered ankle deep with the fall-off. There is something hopeful about that sight. Another season is on its way, and the trees are poised to grow.

We might not be able to feel the tilting earth, but we can see the subtle changes around us. The clock is spinning its way to longer days, the snow is melting into the ground and when the gate is finally raised, the growing season will be off and running. We just have to be ready.