This is the weekend that we must all remember to turn our clocks back an hour.  Daylight savings time shifts to standard time.  It is a function that many of us would like to do more often in life than once a year every fall.  Going back to fix bad decisions, renew our youth, avoid a disagreement, enjoy a special moment --- all of these are reasons to turn back time, if we could.

Mike and I are blessed to have our daughter, Emilie, interested in carrying on the family heritage of being a beef cattle producer.  She is following in the footsteps of her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and I’m sure even earlier ancestors who provided for their families in the 1800s and late 1700s as they settled in southeastern Pennsylvania by farming and raising livestock for food.

The quiet of the summer night was interrupted by an eerie sound.  The Border collies went on high alert and sounded their territorial barks which echoed off the wooded hillsides of our farms.  The high-pitched cry of the nocturnal visitor reverberated up and down the valley, growing closer and closer and louder by the minute.  Intervals of only a minute or two interrupted this unwelcomed nighttime serenade, making it next to impossible for humans or dogs to fall back to sleep.

Farm tours are in full swing.  Fall is a perfect time of year to invite the public to learn more about agriculture by spending a day on different farms and visiting nearby agribusinesses.  It’s an opportunity to teach people the ABCs of agriculture.  Most people have to hear the basics of the food industry's story because they are several generations removed from the farm.  Most have never raised anything edible.  The grocery store shelf is their closest connection to the food system.

The sensation of the entire world spinning out of control woke me from a deep sleep.  My dark bedroom was whirling every direction.  I clamped my eyes, shutting out the blackness, but my mind was besieged by flashing cyclones spinning out of control.  I struggled to bring normalcy to my consciousness, and eventually, the tumbling sensation subsided.

A storm of black and white hair swirled around on the cool autumn breeze.  Clamping my mouth closed and squinting my eyes against the floating fur, I kept brushing my line up of Border collies as they waited their turns to be pampered.  It was an endless task, or so it seemed.  The more I ran the brush through their coats, the more the dog's fine undercoat surfaced and clung to its bristles.  Like the silk scarves of a magician, the fine hair just kept coming and coming.  The seasonal ritual of shedding demanded my attention once again.  An hour of outside grooming would hopefully help keep the floors of my house from harboring heaping mounds of dog hair in the week ahead.

The first day of autumn arrives on Monday.  While I happily welcome the first day of spring which heralds the beginning of a new growing season and the end of a long winter, the arrival of the first fall day brings a much more melancholy feeling.  It is hard to believe six months of planting, nurturing and harvesting crops is cycling to a grand finale.  The last cuttings of hay are being raked and baled.  The early corn is being chopped and ensiled, and the remaining stalks that are drying in the fields are turning a golden brown as their ears droop under the weight of plump grain.

We met on neutral ground --- the parking lot of a nearby restaurant.  We all got cautiously out of our cars and trucks, looking around for friendly faces.  The organizer waved us over to the trunk of her car that served as a desktop that morning.  At last the final group arrived, with license plate and door insignias that normally strike fear into the hearts of farmers. The all too familiar logo of the Department of Environmental Resources reflected the sun’s early rays.  The atmosphere on this August day started off on the cool side in many ways.

Annoying, aggravating, and agonizing.  Those are three words that describe the results of three shiny leaves that have made the past three weeks of summer less than a treat.  To say that I am itching for winter would be pretty much on target right now, even though the cold and snow that comes along with that season are not on my list of favorites.

One of my favorite types of books to read is a mystery.  I am always trying to test my IQ against the author’s in figuring out “who done it” without waiting for all the clues to unfold.  I just finished a book that was a “mystery” after the book was written, printed, and read by a  Berks County 4-H leader who taught my daughter, Emilie, all about sheep.  Roger Bowman, who shared his knowledge on raising the wooly additions to our farm, became an owner of one of our Border Collie puppies after we convinced him that he wouldn’t know how he worked sheep before owning a herding dog.  Mac has become Roger’s partner for the past six years, moving sheep up and down hills on his Berks county farm.