The Good Table At Home: Fallow Season

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Spiritual Touchstone

It’s raining! It’s so exciting! After months of it being dry, with some very light sprinkling that was a cruel tease, we actually have rain. And an “atmospheric river” on the way! As I watched the first storm roll in from my home in the hills, I cleared out the last of the dead stuff in my garden: the tangled husks of sweet pea vines, the spent amaranth, the one last cucumber on its spindly stalk.

To be honest, my garden looks kind of dreadful now. There’s a lot of just… dirt. I seem to fall in love with flowers that have a glorious dance with the sun in summer, and then fall back to nothing in the fall. Honestly, I was a little disappointed at how dang bare everything was looking.

My partner reminded me this week that everything has a fallow season, and something about that stuck with me this week. Fallow is soil that is “plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility as part of a crop rotation or to avoid surplus production.” (Oxford Languages)

Leaving soil fallow allows it to rest, to regenerate, to restore fertility. My garden, after a long summer and drought, just needs some time off. And it’s in my best interest to give it that.

To be honest, I really love fall and winter because of their focus on gathering and rest. We can’t be producing all the time, it’s true, even though capitalism would like us to. Just like the soil, we all need time to rest, to nestle in, and just be for awhile. This should come as no surprise to anyone really, because it’s kind of a seasonal thing, but how easily I forget. I read things like this very blog post every year, and think to myself, “Yes! This will be the year I cut back! I will spend the winter actually wintering, rather than running around, doing a million things.” But I usually don’t keep that promise.

And more dirt, with some bedraggled irises

This year, I am really going to try. I’m going to let my garden remind me that I need time and space to replenish me too. It’s certainly a privilege to be able to take some space, and if you can’t, I’m sorry. We need to work towards more sustainable systems so that everyone can stop hustling when they need to. To the extent that it’s available, I wish you peace and rest whenever you find yourself in a fallow season.

May we all have peace.
May we all have rest.
May we all have ease.