Why would we have expected anything else?\u00a0 After a miserable spring, we had a miserable fall.\u00a0 Late planted crops matured late, no surprise.\u00a0 The bad days it rained or snowed.\u00a0 The good days were cold and cloudy.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t much fun.<\/p>\n
There were few of those sun-dappled autumn days where it is a joy to be outside, with a jacket in the morning that comes off in the afternoon.\u00a0 We had maybe a couple hours like that.\u00a0 In the end, we had time to get things done, barely, finishing in mud.<\/p>\n
There were weeks of below normal temperatures.\u00a0 When we finally got a few days of normal, it was mid-November when normal isn\u2019t exactly shorts-weather.\u00a0 I was hopeful to have a chance to put the farm to bed properly before winter.\u00a0 There is always work at the end of harvest to clean, grease, oil, fix, and shed.\u00a0 I try to be nice to my machines after beating the hell out of them.<\/p>\n
Things have a way of working a lot better next year if they are properly stored away.\u00a0 Tired and beat up myself, there is always the temptation to back things in the shed and go have a beer.\u00a0 In the old days, we would have been told not to put up our horse wet.\u00a0 Equipment is like that.\u00a0 Especially the combine.\u00a0 If it\u2019s not cleaned, rodents from several sections around come to take up residence.<\/p>\n
I got a reminder that my plans aren\u2019t always nature\u2019s plans when a Winter Storm Warning popped up on my phone.\u00a0 Huh?\u00a0 Fall\u2019s over?\u00a0 That was it?<\/p>\n
I rushed to do two weeks of work in a day.\u00a0 Besides machinery, there are other things around a farm to get ready for winter.\u00a0 Plus there are things around the house and porch.\u00a0 Pam gives me lists of tasks that I can ignore while we\u2019re harvesting, but not a minute past if I want a healthy marriage.<\/p>\n
Amid this all, day length shrinks.\u00a0 Light becomes precious.\u00a0 Work ends up being done by yard light, flashlight, and headlight.\u00a0 All those are less efficient than God\u2019s own sunlight.<\/p>\n
In these northern climes, winter is the elephant among the seasons.\u00a0 This is true for southern climes on the bottom of the globe opposite our calendar.\u00a0 You might be able to slide through spring, summer, and fall without a lot of thought.\u00a0 But not winter.\u00a0 You better have food, clothing, and shelter, with an emphasis on the latter.\u00a0 If you remember the fable of the grasshopper and the ant, things don\u2019t end well for the grasshopper.<\/p>\n
This was strikingly true for those who lived here in the past.\u00a0 Both the Native Peoples and the settlers spent most of the warm months preparing for the cold months.\u00a0 Gathering, growing, putting up food, securing shelter, stockpiling heating materials: if you fell short on any of these, it wasn\u2019t an inconvenience.\u00a0 It meant you weren\u2019t likely to see spring.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, the world most of us live in today is more forgiving. \u00a0For people of some means, it\u2019s possible to live mostly outside the seasons.\u00a0 Climate-controlled home, vehicle, workplace, heated garage, shopping at the mall or at your computer.\u00a0 The seasons provide entertainment: hunting, boating, skiing.\u00a0 But they aren\u2019t life threatening.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s prepping for winter that goes on outside, but I\u2019ve noticed as I get older, I have to prep for winter inside.\u00a0 I mean, inside my head.\u00a0 \u201cSeasonal Affective Disorder\u201d is now recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders.\u00a0 You can call it \u201ctrying not to go bat-crazy\u201d in the winter.<\/p>\n
I thought about species besides us humans that find a way to survive and even thrive in the winter.\u00a0 Plants have gone to seed or hardened off.\u00a0 Some critters are burrowed in to hibernate.\u00a0 Others are out there running around friskily any time the sun is shining.\u00a0 It made me think I should be a little tougher, like the squirrels and rabbits in our grove.\u00a0 But then I find a dead squirrel out there and think maybe not.<\/p>\n
There are all those birds that took wing south.\u00a0 I have friends now who are opting for migration, following the birds.\u00a0 They look smarter and smarter every year.\u00a0 I think of them with a jealous sneer as I do a spontaneous dance across our icy yard trying to stay upright.<\/p>\n
At least we know winter is coming.\u00a0 We have a calendar and plenty of evidence in nature.\u00a0 It may come early and harshly, but it\u2019s not a surprise.\u00a0 But there can be \u201cwinters\u201d in our life that aren\u2019t as predictable.\u00a0 These are times of metaphorical winter, when it\u2019s dark and cold in our lives, when the sun doesn\u2019t shine much.<\/p>\n
These might be a relationship turning bad, problems at work or losing a job, an illness for you or someone close.\u00a0 All lives will have these, some more than others.\u00a0 Unlike seasonal winter that is equally distributed, metaphorical winters can be very unfairly allocated.\u00a0 Sometimes they can pile up in our lives.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t look at a calendar and know to prepare for these times, like putting fuel treatment in the gas tank.\u00a0 But there are things we can do to ease the hard times that inevitably come.<\/p>\n
We can nurture friendships and keep close to family.\u00a0 Friends and family are not a given; they are a blessing and a grace.\u00a0 We can have an inner life.\u00a0 There will come times when you are alone; getting along with yourself will be helpful.\u00a0 We can have a prayer life.\u00a0 It\u2019s good to have a channel open to the Creator all the time, not just to beseech Him in the bad times.<\/p>\n
We know the season of winter will pass.\u00a0 Spring will come around.\u00a0 It always has.\u00a0 In the Song of Solomon, we are told, \u201cFor behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.\u201d<\/p>\n
We trust that our personal winters will pass, too.\u00a0 It is faith that God will not give us more than we can handle, although sometimes that might be a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why would we have expected anything else?\u00a0 After a miserable spring, we had a miserable fall.\u00a0 Late planted crops matured late, no surprise.\u00a0 The bad days it rained or snowed.\u00a0 The good days were cold and cloudy.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t much fun. There were few of those sun-dappled autumn days where it is a joy to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 13:09:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115936"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115942,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115936\/revisions\/115942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}