Good morning, Reader.

Sunday was one of those perfect October days. In the words of Anne of Green Gables, "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."

Yesterday felt like one of the twenty beautiful September days we usually get here in Minnesota—the kind we look forward to all summer—but this year it seemed September had hidden them somewhere behind all that rain.

The grass certainly didn't mind the rain. Our pastures are still green, with purple clover blooming in places, even as the fields around us turn brown. For miles in every direction, there are seas of corn and soybeans, soon to be harvested, leaving behind great stretches of bare earth. Our grass, though green, is beginning to slow down as well. We can feel the season changing.

But the weather wasn't what made Sunday perfect.

I got to move cows with my son, Gordon. He is sixteen. He came out to help me move the fence so the cows could enter fresh pasture, and as we worked, we talked.

And there is something I don't ever want to take for granted about working outside with your children. There is no screen between you. No car radio. No list of things that need to be done immediately. Just the two of you, walking through the grass, moving a line, watching cows graze, with the sun on your faces.

It is SO GOOD to be in God's good creation and simply talk.

With my oldest three all in high school now, life can sometimes feel like we are ships passing in the night. Everyone has somewhere to be. School. Activities. Work. Friends. Practices. Games.

And then suddenly you realize your children are getting older, and you wonder where all those little years went.

But this Sunday wasn't busy. Sunday was just a boy (now taller than me) and his mom moving cows.

Afterward, we walked through our new farmland together, talking about dreams and imagining what it will look like someday when all of it is diverse pasture. We talked about the chubby little fox kits I saw out there earlier this summer. We talked about how much we've enjoyed seeing more birds and wildlife returning to this land. There is something pretty special about walking across land entrusted to you with your son and talking about what it might become someday.

Perhaps that's one of the gifts of farming. You are always working on something you won't get to see finished today.

You plant trees whose shade you may never sit under or fruit you may never bite into. You improve soil for someone who may farm it long after you. You move cows across pasture today while imagining what the farm might look like 50 years from now.

And sometimes, if you're very fortunate, you get to walk through that future with your children.

Pheasant hunting opens next weekend. Maybe this will finally be the year Gordon gets lucky and we bring one home to our dinner table.

I hope so.

But I think what I'll remember most about this October is not whether we got a pheasant.

I'll remember the sunshine, the green grass, the cows, and a sixteen-year-old boy walking beside his mom, talking about the land and the future.

These are the ordinary days that don't feel particularly important while we're living them.

And somehow, I think they may become the days I remember most.

With gratitude, Leah