This article first appeared on Sanandi.com

The transition to the autumn is a wonderful time of year. We're just entering into the season now, and with this change comes a whole new part to the cycle of life.

We wanted to put this to words, but found that the Sanandi team did it pretty well when they talked about the farm this season—so we shared their words instead.  

A Short Note on the Beauty of Autumn

Written in Collaboration with Dr. Dieter le Noir

In Valle la Paz, celebrating the agrarian cycle is at the forefront of our minds.

Cosmic forces return in fall, concentrated in the earth after spring and summer’s enormous centrifugal expansion. The heavens open, and a chill wind blows away high, white clouds, delighting all of nature with the crystalline breeze.

As the live oak leaves begin to fall and touch soil for the first time, owls and crows return to cool forests and settle in, their dissonant chattering echoes through the forest, offering limitless joy to all who stop to listen.  

Cattle, goats and horses frolic in meadows beneath the ripening sun while the bees, laden with pollen and nectar, set aside enough to survive the winter.

Everything seems to glow in the warmth of cempasúchil marigolds as they paint hidden meadows yellow and orange for only a handful of days—days of blossom just before dying.

These are the days we celebrate the dead. The days when the dead become earth once again. When the culmination of the year is at its end we are reminded that it is the time for harvesting seeds, and it is time again to burrow deeply inward and find the nourishment that will carry those seeds through the frosted season ahead.

Earth grows strong and we seize the moment to incorporate a biodynamic fermentation and decomposing layer of humus created in seasons past to imbed a thankful gift of fertility into her life-giving soil.

We know now, there is nothing more than to look to the future with hope—the earth has been nourished and clothed.

And it is the time of the Archangel Saint Michael, of Queen Persephone, of Osiris—of cultures the world over—to find the connections that bring us the eternal cycle of death and rebirth, for nature and for humankind.

For in its essence, Autumn aspires only to sow its seeds in the rhythm of the ever-lessening daylight hours and the quiet screeching of leafless branches caressing one another high in treetops.