Second spring

September 22, 2025
Owl Feather Farm, San Juan Island

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. – Albert Camus

Spring is renewal. Fall is reward.

And, as they say in Westeros, winter is coming.

Is that reason to celebrate? It’s definitely time to reflect on our place in the cycle of time on this Earth—and receive the results of what began back in the spring.

Second spring

Aronia bush

It’s also a time of great color… Not just the leaf-flowers that Camus, our favorite philosopher, described. Winter’s corn stock—yes, we have those here at Owl Feather Farm—are a sunflower gold hue that makes you feel rich just cradling it in a bowl. The Orcas pears hanging in the tree, soon to be brought inside for their last days of ripening, are as opulent in garnet, gold and lemon shades as any crown. Beets awaiting winter harvest are royal purple. Red beans are the color of raw, uncut rubies. Apple skins shine crimson on a viridescent background.

Second spring

Orcas pears

Apples are among the ceremonial foods long treasured at Rosh Hashanah, the ancient Jewish holiday that begins today. Pomegranates, pumpkin pastries, carrots; the treasures of autumn that humans used to have storehouses for. It’s a time of meditation; it’s also a new year, a different sort of renewal. Dark months lie ahead, but isn’t it wonderful how many ways there are for us to frame the passage of something no one understands—time—into customs with deep meaning. Even Einstein was baffled by time, which he called an illusion, but he welcomed seasonal holidays along with everyone else.

Today also brings the geophysical moment we shift into fall, but that’s a random mathematical fact regarding Earth orbits and angles of inclination toward the sun.

Second spring

Ancient Hopi yellow corn

All this seems remote and ancient to most modern humans whose sense of seasons is skewed by the conveniences of life. If it’s February and you want a tomato, off you go to the grocery store and shazam, there they are. It’s dark at winter solstice, and getting dark at the equinox, but not in our living rooms and kitchens where the lights blaze bright into the night. If you fancy summer flowers in October, they’re grown below the Equator and flown north.

We follow older hallowed rhythms here at Owl Feather Farm because they rest on the very land that holds us, feeds us, keeps us quite literally grounded. Please stop by and share an apple with us!

—Eric Lucas

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