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Breathe In, Breathe Out

Reader Contribution by Erin Sheehan
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We’ve had a busy year getting settled into our new house, working hard to get our new homestead up and running. For about six months or so it’s seemed pretty frantic – setting up new everything – garden space, compost bin, clothesline, fruit trees, kitchen …

As all of you hard-core gardeners know, September is harvest time. We have pretty much everything coming in from the garden right now and we need to get it put up for winter. But in the midst of it all we broke down last week and took some needed time off. Getting away meant we had to walk away from the harvest work and caring for our fall crops. I lined up two people to help water while we were gone, and we picked and processed as much as we could the days before we left, but for the most part things just piled up.

We spent nearly a week at a lakeside family cabin far away in the mountains. Our only neighbors were the otters, eagles and loons. It did take us a day or two to get into vacation mode. I felt as if I had forgotten how to relax, if that’s possible. But in the end, Jim played lots of guitar and I read lots of books. We swam, biked and hiked. We cooked delicious meals and ate like kings with all the fresh produce we had brought with us.

Somehow I didn’t even get anxious about the garden. Well, maybe a little. But not much.

We came back on Saturday afternoon to discover that the green and yellow beans had gone wild, to say nothing of the bushels of ripe tomatoes we had to deal with. But, it was worth it. We managed to unwind and recharge for the first time in a very long time. No more breaks for a while as we continue to bring in tomatoes and start on the apples.