Yesterday I packed my truck and left the island for the winter. The fall galloped away from me this year it seems, shaking her head, laughing wildly, always one step ahead. But when it’s time to go, it’s time to go.

After spending Thanksgiving with my family, I’ll be driving down the snowbird path to spend a few months at Bee Heaven Farm in Homestead, Florida, just south of Miami. I thought that I might make a slow jaunt of it, visit friends along the way, but as life on the island drew me in my departure date receded further and further into November. Now it looks like I’ll be doing the whole trip in three days, in order to be there for my first day of work, exactly one week from today.

It was a long, mild fall here in the Bay State. We spent much of the fencing project working in shirtsleeves, eating sandwiches on picnic tables at noontime in November, which is fairly outrageous. But I miss color.

I look forward to farming just for the joy of it, for its own sake, just being a field hand and following instructions one more time under tropical skies. The spring is going to be a tremendous head trip. I am going to be putting up a greenhouse, implementing my own cultivation plan, building from the ground up. It’s my dream and I am unspeakably grateful that I’ve been given these opportunities. That being said, I fully expect that it will be tremendously scary and difficult.

For now, give me someone else’s transplants to put in the soil, someone else’s produce to wash and bunch. I’ll take care of it.