Zoë Bradbury has been blogging for Edible Portland about her first year farming. Nine months in, the fruit of her initial labor is fully evident—but her work is far from done.

By Zoë Bradbury

The harvest moon is waxing overhead, marking time in this year of firsts on the farm. There is a density out in the fields where round, red beets fatten underground and ripe cabbages crowd one another above. This is the time of year when summer bleeds into autumn, and autumn into summer, in a swollen slack tide of vegetables.

It is the crescendo, the realization of months of stoop labor, and it is all heavy: corn, leeks, squash, beans, carrots, beets, chicory, potatoes, lettuce, fennel, kale, celeriac, apples, pears. The tomatoes and strawberries squeeze out their last fruits while the dahlias bloom on and on, unstoppable until the rains come.

It’s a bittersweet bend in the calendar. In the Chinese philosophy of the Five Elements, this is the time of Metal—of death and decay. Metal carries Water (winter), which nourishes Wood (spring), that feeds Fire (early summer), which creates Earth (late summer), bearing Metal once again.

The cycle is plain to the eye and felt on the farm. Ceaseless winter rains gave way to tender spring shoots that grew into blossom, then fruit, and now Metal is everywhere: The withering squash plants are dusted in fall’s powdery mildew and the gone-to-seed sunflowers have been pecked by birds. Life and death collide. And in that window of overlap, the farm puts out its greatest abundance—a crazy, fleeting cornucopia. The celebration of harvest is made poignant knowing that the ebb is inevitable.

I am one part melancholy, one part relieved.