The season is winding down now for sure. When we begin our days, the sun is just beginning to crest the horizon, and long gone are the evenings when it was light enough to work until bedtime. (Not that I have the energy at this point in the season to do that anyway.)

This warm weather certainly is an anomaly. To still be working in short-sleeve t-shirts this late in October is unusual, as is the fact that we still haven’t had our first frost of the season—that usually happens by the second week of the month. In terms of what’s happening in the field, this lack of a frost really doesn’t mean much at this point. A little frost would be helpful to knock down the last few bugs hanging around, and it does help sweeten up many of the fall crops, but most of the vegetables that would have been killed by a frost have already pretty much faded away.

These balmy days sure are nice for wrapping up all the end-of-season farm tasks, though. We’ve checked off many of those, but one crucial job still remains: planting next season’s garlic. If all goes according to plan, that will happen next week. And once those little cloves are tucked in the soil and dreaming of spring, we will be ready for winter.

One of the great joys of my job is watching the farm cycle through the seasons: from sleeping under its blanket of silent snow, to its thaw in a rush of water and light, to its burst of gold and green in the spring, its midsummer riot of growth, its abundance of high summer, and, now, its long descent toward winter, when it will sleep again.

And of all these movements, I love fall the most. I love how mornings can be cool and misty, afternoons warm and sunny, evenings clear and quiet. I love the variety of vegetables coming out of the fields as the harvest moves from the fruits of high summer to the sustaining roots of winter. I love how the work load lightens just enough to take full notice of all these changes, and how I have space in my head to begin to conspire about next year. And, perhaps above all, I love the satisfaction of coming to the end of a full season of hard work and the privilege of growing good food for all you good people.

With the fall equinox behind us, the farm now begins its slow descent toward winter. In the short term, these cooler, more comfortable days are full of our final harvests, and it’s gratifying to see the season’s long song reach this crescendo.

In the middle term, we can look forward to what I’ve come to call “putting the farm to bed.” This involves pulling all our hardware out of the field and stowing it for next season, and cleaning the greenhouse and barn and setting everything in order. It also means mowing off and tilling under all the spent crops from the past season and sowing the field to a beneficial cover crop to protect it from the winter winds and snow.

And in the longer term, aside from enjoying a little rest, I begin to look toward next season, by drafting budgets, ordering seeds and soil, starting to accept sign-ups for next season’s CSA, and dreaming about what possibilities might still lie waiting for us in this place.

As summer now slides into fall, the name of the game is endurance. And our purpose becomes single-minded: the harvest. All other farm tasks have faded into the past. There is no more greenhouse work to be done, no more seeding and transplanting in the field. There is very little weeding left, and only a couple of potential pests to keep an eye out for. Our days fill with the urgency of the crops’ yields. And while we may be weary, we are glad for the generous earth’s abundance.

This week looks like a scorcher, with high temperatures and high humidity pushing the heat index into dangerous territory. So my priority becomes making sure everything and everyone stays well hydrated—crops, ducks, chickens, cats, and, especially, the crew. While there’s a full slate of work to do, we’re just going to have to downshift our expectations of what’s possible in this summer swelter. I don’t want anyone going down with heat exhaustion.

It helps to know that this weather will pass. We’re on the cusp of September, after all, and the glorious golden days of fall. Which is not to say that these late summer days aren’t full of their own satisfactions. Not just the good things to eat coming out of the field—all the tomatoes and sweet and hot peppers and squash and zucchini and the rest of the summer fruits—but also the way the days are lush and languid and full of life and light and heat, treasures to gather and store up against the coming winter’s siege.

What makes August hard is the growing weight of the season’s accumulating failures. In a big, complicated machine like a diversified organic vegetable farm, there are bound to be at least a few things that go sideways. Somewhere Wendell Berry writes about how each growing season is bound by the contingency of creatures, and how at some point one has to trade the vision for what could have been for the acceptance of what is. For me, that inflection point arrives sometime in August.

And right now it feels like a great many things have gone sideways. We’ve lost a few crops to weeds. And when I say lost, I mean that literally, as in, “Where did that succession of beans go?” A few crops are under heavy disease and pest pressure, and time to respond to those pressures is short. So we’re in full triage mode, prioritizing the work that will make the most difference, and letting go of the rest.

Even so, we find ourselves amidst abundance. The generous earth yields its gifts. Each day we find numberless things to delight our senses, from the few sunflowers the deer didn’t eat in riotous bloom to the sweet melons hiding in the pigweed and foxtail sedge. And as summer fades into fall, we remember that this all is a limited time offer, and that the time for feasting is now.

Monday afternoon I mowed off the yellow sweetclover cover crop and found myself surrounded by birds. Tree swallows and barn swallows, their liquid bodies looping and darting all around me, catching the insects flushed from their hiding places in the field. The swallows kept at it all the time I was mowing, and even long afterward, feasting on the wing.

It always makes me happy to see those birds flying over the field. It tells me that I’m doing my job as an organic farmer, extending hospitality to as many creatures as the land can support. It tells me that the land is tending toward health, with a rich and diverse habitat. Plus, the swallows are a delight to watch.

It’s not always easy being hospitable to all the creatures that call this farm home. A couple of baby deer have decided to eat down to the ground all the sunflowers I was hoping to harvest for the CSA later this month, and some as-yet-unknown four-legged critter has been snacking pretty heavily on our first cucumber succession. (The crew thinks a raccoon, but I’m betting on a groundhog.) But in the main, there is room for all, and all are welcome.