September Song

Harvest in these hills goes beyond the tomatoes and corn and beans and peppers that have flowed into my kitchen in the past month. It's time for the second (and last) hay cutting and baling.

As I drove past this bottom where a baler had been at work, I slowed to breathe in the fragrance of the new-mown hay -- one of the joys of the season -- and my eye was caught by the sight of three children, running from bale to bale in some game of their own. They ran and spun and twirled, drunk with the delight and freedom of the open space . . . maybe like me, intoxicated by the perfume of the hay.

And there's the tobacco harvest. Not what it once was, when there were government price supports and every small farmer had a little field or two of 'green gold.'

Now only a few large farmers grow tobacco. And though I hate the smell of cigarettes, the resiny aroma of ripe tobacco makes me nostalgic for the days we grew it.

As I've said before, the sight of cut tobacco in the fields always makes me think of hundreds of ladies in their trailing ball gowns, lined up and pacing through the measures of a stately dance. Possibly to the strains of Kurt Weil's "September Song."