On Saturday I attended the Harvest Open House at a local country farm store just outside of town called Country Wagon Produce. It is situated close enough to stores and schools to be convenient, but far enough out of a more urban setting to feel like what it is ... a country store on a country road. I love to visit this place and browse their shelves of homemade jams, jellies, dried spices (all from herbs grown right there on the farm), baked goods, fresh produce (also grown right there) and handmade items of every kind from soaps, to scarves, to household decor and more. Outside the store are baskets and bins filled with apples, pears, squashes, gourds, and, or course, pumpkins of every size. I could visit this place every day and never grow tired of it.
On the day of the annual Harvest Open House, there is food, music and fun things for the whole family including a hay ride, a magician, animals from the local Zoomobile, and even a giant sling shot where you can send a less-than-perfect apple or pear sailing across the field to try and hit the target. The one thing that caught my attention the most that day, however, was what filled my nostrils and my heart, what I refer to as the perfume of the country.
Even though it was raining the day we went, I didn't mind. For me there is something intoxicating about the smell of the rain on the grass and the fresh cut hay, and on the barrels of apples and pears. There is a scent from the nearby river that calls to me of days spent sitting on a blanket beside it and having a picnic with my very first grandchild when she was only a toddler, watching the ducks and geese glide by. The freshly fallen leaves have a smell all their own that announces the season, and the aroma of wood-smoke from the fireplaces and wood stoves around the area call to mind chilly with a mug of hot soup at my elbow and some yarn and a crochet hook in my hand. No other season's perfume calls to me as this one does, nor makes me as homesick for my old country home.
I expect I will return there from time to time to stock up on my supply of cooking herbs before they close for the winter after Christmas, and to grab a loaf of freshly made raisin or pumpkin bread, or just to stand outside to breathe in the those memories of home. Perhaps one day if I'm lucky they will move from the realm of memory to the realm of reality once again.
And so it is.
