The work that belongs to Autumn
Even when my boots aren’t the first thing to touch the paddock each morning, the season changes still reaches me. And autumn, I love autumn the best. The season for rest (winter) is approaching, and I adore slow cooked meals, warm woollen jumpers and the alpacas are regrowing their fleeces.
Autumn arrives in the angle of the light, and I remember, before farming, noticing the seasons in smaller, more incidental ways. Driving home in the late afternoon, this particular time of year when the sun would slip beneath the edge of the visor and strike the dashboard directly. It was fleeting, but unmistakable.
The light had shifted its path, and without checking a calendar, I knew the season had turned.
Now, I notice it differently.
It’s no longer contained within the frame of a windscreen, but stretched across the landscape. The sun reaches the paddocks at a lower angle, laying long shadows behind the herd. It lingers on the ridgelines and catches the texture of the grass in ways it didn’t just weeks before. The land becomes the reference point. The hills hold the light. And the season announces itself, quietly and without asking to be noticed.
In the quiet urgency of planning notes, in the subtle recalibration of what matters now versus what can wait - some of autumn’s work is restorative. Cleaning up what summer leaves behind. Finishing the last of the slashing while the ground is still forgiving, the scent of cut grass lingering in the air long after the engine falls silent. Prepping the laneway trees, trimming and clearing around them so they can stand steady through winter winds, their leaves already beginning their quiet descent.
There is the slow, deliberate work of dragging fallen limbs down to the burn piles by the river. They resist at first, catching on the overgrowth of summer that has tried to reabsorb the fallen, scraping and sighing across the earth before settling into their final place. The piles grow gradually, made not in urgency but in accumulation.
And then there is the walking. Unhurried. Observant. Autumn is when I like to walk each paddock. I’m curious what weeds have taken over, what holes in fencing might need repairing, or what blackberry has taken a hold. Crossing the paddocks and scanning for the quiet persistence of weeds. Spot-treating the remnants that dare to return, knowing that what is addressed now will not become a larger burden later.
The air is different during these tasks.
Still.
This year we are watching the health of our herd, especially the newest members, to make sure their bodies are preparing for their first winter.
Autumn carries a softness that wasn’t there in summer and avoids the harshness that some winter days can bring. The light stretches longer across the landscape, casting longer shadows and even the work itself feels less like effort and more like conversation.
A conversation and response between land and caretaker.
These jobs don’t announce themselves loudly, but they shape the season that follows. They are closing loops, preparing the farm, and myself, for the inward turn that winter brings.
Because farming, at its heart, is less about presence and more about attunement.