After 20+ years of living in Chicago, a wonderful city where I want never to live again, DB and I moved to a small dairy farm in south-central Pennsylvania

We rented the house on what was the farmer's second farm, where he kept his heifers and grew hay. His home farm was up the road, and there he had his milking barn and milk tank. Someday I'll tell you about the milk tank, but today is about something else.

The house itself was built of logs covered on the outside with clapboard and on the inside with drywall probably. The chimney in the central fireplace had a twist in it, which the Amish farmer we asked to inspect it told us was usual for the time the house was built: it kept the rain out. The kitchen fireplace had been boarded up and a propane stove installed in front of it, but when we squeezed up the tiny, twisting flight of stairs behind the door in the left corner, we found that it continued to the second floor, and the lingering smell told that it had been used to smoke meat. The wooden plank floor was still sound and the little windows intact; we used it to dry onions laid on clean newspaper.

We were extremely lucky that the farmer's wife had put in a large organic garden before they moved up to the home farm after the farmer's dad sold out to him. She had left it well dug over and ready for planting, which was especially helpful since we moved there in May and needed to get things going right away.

Anyway, we had a good harvest of summer veggies and herbs, but our real success was with fall and winter crops, since we didn't have to rush to get them planted. This first year was when I really learned to appreciate veg that could be harvested even in winter. Wading through the snow to cut the kale still standing tall and green, or bring in Brussels sprouts sweetened for Thanksgiving dinner, or pick chard and spinach from the cold frame is a pleasure all its own and one I wish I could have again.

But of course fall crops couldn't survive the winter cold and had to be harvested. These included squashes. We grew mostly butternut and buttercup squash, and we got a lot of them. We stored them on newspaper under our bed in the unheated upstairs bedroom, and they lasted all winter. We generally lost only the last few we hadn't eaten, and then I wished we had a pig or chickens who could enjoy them, but we didn't.

Our anniversary was in October, my favorite month like I said, and that year I had made a nice dinner to celebrate for when DB got home from work. The moon was full that cold, still night, and the cats were roaming around near the back porch waiting for their usual treat of egg beaten up with milk. DB walked into the warm kitchen full of good smells; I had drawn a heart on the steamed-up window to welcome him. He announced that the temperature was going to drop a lot later and we had better get the squash in.

I turned off the oven to hold dinner, and we went out to the garden. Silver moonlight shone like a gleaming path along the rows, most dug over and composted for winter, but the squash rows still containing the orange and tan and green veg that had been hardening off for a week or so. We made many trips, each holding as many squashes in our arms as we safely could. Into the house, close door behind us, up the stairs, lie flat on the floor to arrange the squash, then back out to repeat.

The four cats found this intensely interesting and lined up, two on each side of the row, to watch. Like statues they sat turning their heads to left and right as their people inexplicably marched back and forth over and over. Light shone on their fur and sparked off the ends of their whiskers; they were limned in light, just these four barn cats we had adopted, becoming silvered beings on that magical night.

Eventually we finished and came in. DB put the treat out on the porch and stirred up the fire in the wood stove. I served the baked enchiladas and as we ate we realized why we had left all we'd known to venture into the unknown: for this repletion of body and soul.