~and thus we were called gleaners~

     It's mid-afternoon here along the Western Slopes and the clock on the kitchen wall reads "3:00".  The Colorado sky, once this morning a most beautiful shade of robin's egg blue,  is now dark gray and cloudy.  The storm system that they have predicted to arrive late this evening and into tomorrow is coming, slow but sure.  The arrival of the winter season is inevitable and a month from today it shall officially arrive.  Autumn is getting ready to leave us, being nudged out by "the dark" but what a gorgeous season it has been for us here in Montrose County.  With colors aplenty, we have most certainly enjoyed its presence.  Dear Autumn, we give you our thanks.

     The farmyard around our house here just outside of the city limits has been bustling today as machinery has been moved back and forth as the last of our landlord's crops are being harvested.  Acres of corn have been ready to cut this week and with precision, a John Deere combine has been making the rounds.  I stood outside to watch it this morning for a long time as it passed by while harvesting the crop.  I had to think of my own father, now long gone from the earth, and all the many acres of corn, wheat and milo he cut in his over 25 years of making the harvest circuit with his combines.  When I first moved here last summer, homesick as could be for my old home in Kansas, I took a lot of solace in the fact that we were at least living out of the city.  Being on an old homestead put me in mind of my youth back in Kansas and if I tried really hard, I could almost imagine that I was back there once again.  
     Around noontime Mike asked me if I'd like to go and pick up the leftover corn from the field that had just been harvested.  "You mean be a gleaner?", I asked him with a smile on my face and so off we went.  The temperature was still so pleasant and it was a real joy to be able to be outside in the "great outdoors" before the weather would be changing way too soon this day.  Sally the Dog went with us and with buckets in hand, we started down the rows.  
     Now I've gleaned for leftover corn before, having walked many a field with my friend from back home in Hutchinson named Ron.  Every year we did it as we picked up leftover corn from the fields near his parents' farm near the small Kansas town of Moundridge.  The corn I gathered then went straight home and into the bin to feed the hungry squirrels that lived in the trees of my front yard all winter long.  The squirrels in Kansas are so different than the ones here in Colorado, leastwise as I see it.  Here the squirrels just like to systematically mow down most everything I plant that is in their way.  Whatever we found to bring home from the field adjacent to us would be saved until the snows of January fall down.  Then we will leave it for the deer of the field that often frequent our neighborhood all year long.  It won't be much but it will at least provide some sustenance.  
     It was kind of fun actually, this trodding up and down rows of harvested corn.  In some spots we found very little but in other spots we definitely "hit the jackpot".  It was amazing to both Mike and I just how much of a harvested corn crop gets wasted, especially on the ends where the combine cannot get to it all.  We were lucky enough to find a huge tub full in the hour and a half we were there and with the clouds moving in as the temperature was dropping, we decided that we had found enough.

And for this day, we were called "the gleaners".

I am a Kansas farm girl, through and through.  I've seen many a harvest come and go, yet this was the first time I ever walked through a cornfield with a view of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in the distance.  What a most beautiful sight to behold.

First a bucket and then an entire tub full.  When food is "slim picking" for the deer herd that stays close by us in the cold days ahead, I hope that they remember to stop over to get some of the corn we picked up today.  They are like "old friends" now who stop by the house from time to time just to show us that they are still around.

     This good Saturday afternoon is nearly over and sooner than we like to think of it, the darkness of the evening shall arrive.  The temperature outside is quickly dropping and according to the weather app on my phone, the moisture that has been promised to us has a 40% chance of arriving by bedtime tonight.  The mountains around us shall receive yet another dumping of snow and how thankful I am that I do not have to cross over any of the passes tonight.  
     I thought of my dad while I was in the field and wondered what he would think of his "little girl" now living so far away from the place he always called "home".  My dad would have been happy that I was out gathering up that which was missed by the combine and I could just see him shaking his head at the amount that was left unharvested.  My father took a lot of pride in making sure that whenever one of his combines cut a field, that very little was left to waste.  It was just the way he was. 
     Although none of us will ever know what Heaven is like until we get there, I often times imagine that if there is a wheat field and a combine, then my father is having the time of his eternal life.  There are no mud holes, nothing ever gets plugged up, the farmers are always satisfied, and the wheat gets 60 bushels to the acre.  And my father?  He is forever happy.

I'm glad that Mike and I don't have to rely on gleaning to get us through the winter.  We are most blessed.  But just for today, it was a lot of fun and good exercise.  The best things in this life do not have to come with a high price tag.  All they cost is a little bit of time.