A poem for the harvest season

Jill Severn portrait

Our neighborhood awoke to frost on our rooftops and gardens last week – an event that marks a semi-official end to the growing season, which began the day after the last frost of spring.

It’s the end of the season for frost-tender plants, which are now turning to mush. But hardy greens and broccoli are still among the living, and so are the big, bold butternut squash plants that successfully climbed my trellis. For them, the kiss of a flavor-boosting frost was the finale of their season of spectacular growth. They are fully mature – about five pounds each! – so it’s time to bring them in, and to clear out their giant mass of foliage before it is overrun with mildew.

This might be the semi-official end of the growing season, but it’s a high point of the harvest season.

The pride and joy of my bountiful squash harvest brought to mind an 19^th century poem by James Whitcomb Riley, a self-educated writer who often wrote in his native Indiana dialect. Riley published several books of poetry for both children and adults, and eventually became a newsman.

Here are the first and last stanzas of one of his most famous poems:

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,
And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,
And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,
With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;
And your cider-makin’ ’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage, too!...
I don’t know how to tell it—but ef sich a thing could be
As the Angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me—
I’d want to ’commodate ’em—all the whole-indurin’ flock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

Today’s home gardener is far more likely to have frost on a pumpkin than to even know what “fodder in the shock” is:  a clump of drying cornstalks tied together, soon to be put in the barn and used as fodder for livestock in the winter.

There’s a lot of food in that poem, for both animals and people – and a lot of food for thought.

Reading it might make you think about the skills it took to sustain that 19^th century farming-, family- and community-centered life. There were no Target stores, no Safeways or Walmarts.

Imagine being in one of those stores now, and wondering whether you have the skills to make (or do without) all you’re about to buy. (Also, raise your hand if you’ve ever made “souse,” which is some kind of pickled pig preserve.)

Those 19th-century farm folks spent a lot more time planting, cultivating, picking, gathering, hunting, herding, and flock-tending – and probably even more time processing and preserving food for the winter ahead. They knew the value of every meal in a way that we do not: They knew that the blessed earth and their own hard work produced every bite they ate.

It’s no wonder the abundance of fall – from the frost on the pumpkins to the apples in the cellar and the souse in the pantry – made the poet feel so confident and big-hearted in his family’s bounty he could feed “the whole indurin’ flock” of angels.

As a 21st-century home gardener, the best I could do would be to invite a flock of angels over for a feast of butternut squash soup. But even that strikes the same chord of abundance, and renews my gratitude for the earth that feeds us all.

Now that we’ve put Halloween behind us, I hope this season – and that poem – inspires us all to  appreciate the earth’s abundance with every meal we eat. November is, after all, the month for Thanksgiving.

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com