The Brink of Winter
Last evening, I wandered outside to the woodpile with my camera and tripod, the wind bringing with it a mild 56 degrees breeze that left me feeling rejuvenated after months of negative temperatures. I recently told my husband that being pregnant in the winter has to be my least favorite season to grow a small human. I do not actively try to exercise, at least in the modern sense of it such as going to a gym. Rather, I find myself leaning more towards the natural rhythm of the seasons, shedding my winter weight in the spring and summer much like an animal would their own fur.
The farm is a perfect escape for work that moves the body and pushes your muscles to the edge. As we are such a small farm, everything that we do to prepare for the growing season must be done by hand. Our neighboring farmer friends must shake their heads at us as they drive by in their combines and we stand in the field with a hoe or pitchfork, much like the Amish though we do not identify with them. As such, we tend to say that our farm is really just an oversized garden, and for that we are grateful for the work that it takes to produce as much as we have been able to in the past.
As I wandered about around the farmhouse, to the chicken coop, and eventually the miniature grove of trees that holds our curing woodpile for summer bonfires I reveled in the silence of a gentle wind. Pam, one of our farm cats, followed me down and sat with me while I pondered and pattered about. She is welcoming another litter this spring, as far as we can tell.
It is still too early in the season for the return of some songbirds and no little perennial plants have yet poked their heads up from the soil. A false spring day such as yesterday did not bring out the bunnies from their burrows nor did it welcome any sight of nests built in trees. Pam and I sat at the woodpile, with our swollen pregnant bellies, and enjoyed the silence that living far from neighbors brings. There is a feeling of change on the horizon as we reach the brink of winter. In a few short weeks, the pace of life here on our homestead will change from one of slowness and growth to one of lively birth. Now we study and build up on our skills, slowly growing things unseen and preparing.
I used to think of spring as a time of growth when the rewards are so easily taken in summer and autumn. Now, as I wait patiently to bring a new life to this world just when everything is turning green, I cannot help but compare my pregnancy to the seasonal change. For spring truly is a time of birth rather than of growth, as I believed it to be before. We welcome the birth of new plants as they emerge from the soil to one day grow into the food for our tables. We welcome tiny kittens born in baskets on the porch and little chicks hatching from eggs underneath the feathery down of their mothers. We welcome the birth of fresh ideas and new skills we have spent the colder months learning and tinkering at.
And just as the weather is about to change again, beckoning in a new season, we will welcome another baby on this land to learn and grow and frolic and drink in the beauty of this natural place, not knowing they are doing so until they are much older. That is truly the beauty of their childhood, I think. One day they will want to move away from this place and seek new and different things, like all adolescents do. Perhaps they will realize while they are out in the world that they miss this place where time slows down and you notice those tiny moments like the margin of a season. All I can hope is to share it with them.
xoxo Kayla
My dress is the Meg Oversized/Maternity Dress in Denim from Little Women Atelier.
