NOVEMBER

THE ELEVENTH MONTH • 2021 NOVEMBER HATH 30 DAYS

The farmer sat there milking Bess, / A-whistling all the while; He was a sunburnt, stalwart man, / And had a kindly smile. –Mary E. Wilkins

Farmer's Calendar

Farmer's Calendar "Every man looks at his woodpile with a kind of affection," wrote American essayist Henry David Thoreau (1817–62). He's right, too, isn't he? An ample woodpile has a familiar, reassuring presence. It's a satisfactory object in a way that's a little hard to account for. We respond to the sight of a good woodpile with a level of contentment.

What is it that contents us? Not use, or not use alone. It's not as fuel that a woodpile makes its particular appeal. It's as a symbol. We are cheered and comforted by our woodpile today because a woodpile is one of the stations of the year and expresses the essential ambiguity of all seasonal work. It represents a job that we know we can do well enough but that we also know will never finally be done: Woodpiles are built up that they may be torn down. Massive as they are, they're ephemeral. You'll have to build another next year, which you will then once more throw down. The woodpile reminds us of the fix we're in just by being alive on Earth. It connects us with the years, and so it connects us with one another. We may as well look at our woodpile with affection, then, for it makes us be philosophers.

Listen to the Farmer's Calendar at Almanac.com/Podcast.