A Harvest of Words

The fields are golden, the baskets heavy. The scent of spice wafts through open windows, where pies cool fresh from the oven. There’s that crispness in the air that heralds the chilly months are on their way. Leaves crunch at our feet as we walk. Those of us in the city flock to the farms to remind ourselves of something more homespun, something that we can touch. The barns fill up, apples are being pressed into cider, animals are grazing in their fields, and corn field mazes are filled with the laughter of children playing tag.

October is the season of harvest — not just of grain or apples, but of all we’ve tended quietly through the year. We gather up what’s most important to us and put it away where it will be safe from the coming winter. Some of us gather fruits and vegetables to can for the winter. Others gather up firewood. We all tend the field — you and I alike. This season, I am collecting words, gathering as many as I can to keep me warm this winter.

I lay them out on the table, all my words and manuscripts. My checklists, my writing schedule, my social media calendar, my journal, and my poems that don’t fit anywhere right now. And I realized that my table is like a barn full of apples. I can’t possibly eat all of these apples by myself. Words, just like apples, are sweeter when shared.

We don’t just harvest for ourselves; we do it to share. A farmer may plant the seed and tend the field, but the yield only matters when it’s carried to the table. In the same way, I can gather words onto the page, but they become a meal only when they’re shared, tasted, and remembered by others. Without the community that gathers, a field is just a field, and a writer is just a keeper of silence.

The farmer’s harvest without neighbors is only grain in a barn; the writer’s harvest without readers is only ink in a drawer. The feast isn’t laid for one. The hearth calls us together, and in that gathering, the season’s work becomes more than food, more than words — it becomes life shared.

This community — friends, family, beta readers, and subscribers alike — is not just guests at the table. You are fellow tenders of the field.

Of course, no field is perfect. Every season has its spoiled apples, its seeds that never sprouted, its rows where the sun or rain did not quite give enough. My storehouse of words is the same. Not every poem ripened, not every draft bore fruit. Some pieces fell flat, even when I’ve tended them with care. There are plenty of seeds that didn’t take root, and a few apples that fell from the branch early. While tending the field, plenty of poems didn’t make the cut, and they have been lovingly placed in barrels to ferment and distill into something new.

It was my community that taught me which fruits were best to share and which to leave in the field. Even when the lesson stung, it reminded me that this harvest is not mine alone. You help me tend the rows. It’s often thought that writing is a solo activity, but it is anything but. Your presence turns words into a story, and me into an author. Feedback — even when hard — is an act of love that keeps the field honest.

And as I think about what we gather, what we keep, and what we pass along, I can’t help but think of my grandfather. His goal in going back to school was to inspire my cousin, not me. But life scatters seeds in unexpected rows. My cousin never took root in that soil. Instead, I did — picking up his words, a spark left out in the rain, and carrying them forward to share with you. Did he know, when he spoke them aloud, that his ember would someday catch in my hands?

His story has become part of mine, set gently in the communal storehouse where others may draw warmth and light. It is a different kind of harvest, one that stretches across generations. He scattered seeds he thought had vanished into the weeds, only to find that some seeds lie hidden, waiting for their season, and rise when the time is right.

As we gather by the fire, I remember: every ember is carried together, every word made brighter in the sharing. This is my harvest, but it belongs to all of us. May these words, like apples across the table, warm your hands and brighten your hearth as the nights grow long.