This is the final week of the summer CSA.  Obligingly, the weather and light have made abrupt changes themselves, ushering in the end of our season together.  The golden sunlight at 4pm yesterday was beautiful but weak and waning.  A heavy frost, even ice, lingered in the long shadows in the fields throughout the morning after a low of 23 degrees on Sunday night.  NOAA has officially called the end of the growing season.  We're moving towards our darkest day, more rapidly now it feels, only to immediately begin the tilt, orbit and rotation to our longest one once we reach it.  This winter, we'll hash out the lessons we've learned from this season and get some much needed rest, readying to greet you again next year, when we're just days away from the summer solstice.  Thank you for being a part of this farm and this CSA; I hope that the season was as enjoyable and delicious for you as it was for us.  And if you're already feeling nostalgic and aren't quite ready for the CSA to end, sign up for a winter share and enjoy the festivities of a different season on the farm.  We'd love to see you out here again!  In the meanwhile, take a moment to savor Mary Oliver's poignant articulation of this transitional time of year.  Stay warm, be well and know that we are grateful to have you as a part of the Waltham Fields community.

Fall Song by Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures