By Talya Boerner

We are five days from the official first day of fall. Can I get an amen?

Fall represents harvest. After a long, sweaty summer spent toiling from can to can’t, harvest is that time to recognize hard work and celebrate crops grown in the South.

Corn. Rice. Cotton. Wheat. Did I mention cotton? Yes, cotton is my favorite.

As a child of the seventies, cotton harvest was much different than today’s process. All the little towns came alive as cotton trailers lined streets waiting for a turn at the gin, the hub of town. Riding the bus home after school, I watched a blur of white from the dusty window as pickers made a second pass through fields. Clumps of cotton lined roads like snow, blown from open trailers.

If we were lucky, there was time after school to play in one of Daddy’s cotton trailers. Our official job was to tromp down the cotton after a load was dumped making room for the next load. We jumped and turned flips and dug tunnels through the warm cotton that seemed to breathe like a live thing. The smell of cotton saturated the air, our hair, everything.

It still saturates my memories.

Fall brings a melancholy feeling too. Carefree summer ends in a flurry of last minute vacations and back to school activities. There’s a slight shift in the temperature. The days begin to grow shorter.

Today, harvest is more efficient. Bales are round. Gins are fewer and farther between. Overall, I know this is a good thing for farmers and agriculture and the economy in general. But I can’t help wonder what my kids will look back on with fondness from their childhoods. Their “back in my day” stories will certainly be different. Do you wonder about this too?

Happy fall y’all!

As the daughter of an Arkansas cotton farmer, Talya grew up making mud pies and does her best thinking wearing gardening gloves. Although she has lived in Dallas since college, she has a continued passion for the Mississippi Delta and returns home to the family farm often. Talya freelances for Front Porch, Bourbon and Boots, East Dallas Advocate and Only in Arkansas. She is working on several writing projects including her first novel. Follow her heartfelt stories about food, farm, garden and life at Grace Grits and Gardening.