Autumn days: Missouri enters its sweet season

The leaves are starting to turn and fall, meaning fall is well under way.

Even in a time that we seem to have forgotten our society’s agricultural roots, we can appreciate the shift into the season of harvest. It means locally grown pumpkins and apples – and locally made apple cider – are showing up in stores. Hay rides and the aroma of burning leaves will be here soon.

The folks who track these things say corn, soybeans and hay look good. Even black walnuts will put a few dollars in the pockets of those with the time and stamina to go around and collect them.

As squirrels are busy with harvests of their own – finding nuts for the cold winter – hunters have already been in the woods and have taken thousands of deer and turkey – and will take tens of thousands more when the main part of the season arrives in the colder weeks of late fall.
We’ve had plenty of rain this year and were spared a brutally hot summer. Is is long, lingering fall too much to hope for?