I am sad. I am not only sad. Not forever sad. Not stuck-in-a-rut or despairingly sad. But nonetheless, sad.

The farm is changing, or so it seems. Autumn is pressing upon us—a season of dropping off and falling away. A time of shedding and losing and letting go.

Last week I hugged our two oldest children in their newly appointed college dorm rooms and drove home. Without them. Back on the farm, I heard the silence. Within hours of returning, I removed a leaf from the kitchen table. I took chore clothes from the hooks, towels from the racks, and stuffed them into the washing machine. I moved boots, cleared clean laundry boxes, and boiled far too much pasta for our remaining three children. I noticed: less mess, less noise, less laughter. The house is no longer bursting. There is slack. Sag. Sadness. They are gone.

It is not just, however, that I am missing two of our own. Their departure marks the end of an arc in our journey as a farm family. Eight years ago, when we moved to this place, Jessica was 7 and Jordan 9. Ever since, their passions and their willingness to work, their concern for the world and their visions for how to make it better, have driven our farm’s development. Jordan wanted a cow; we bought our first heifer. Jordan wanted to train oxen; we bought a pair of bulls. Jessica wanted to ride; we rescued Marvin. Jordan and Jessica planted seeds, our garden grew. And when Kyra was old enough, she joined in.

So it was that in June of this year we were milking 4 cows; fetching firewood with a homemade sled pulled by Jordan’s oxen; rotating 9 cattle and 1 horse through 12 fenced pastures; tending 14 hens, feeding 4 cats, and weeding our largest vegetable crop to date. I was making cheese every day—hard, soft, and in between.

We knew it wouldn’t last. We couldn’t keep it all going without the oldest two. By the end of July, we sold three of our milkers, keeping Jordan’s first cow, Daisy. This week, we are drying her off too, as she is due to calve in October. This week, for the first time in years, we will need to buy milk. We have stored pounds of cheese and butter in freezer and fridge, but our half-gallon glass bottles lie side by side on the shelf, clean, dry, and empty.

Then again, it is not just that the kids are leaving and our milk flow ebbing. This summer I finished my book—the third in the series that I moved here to write. While the manuscript is still under review, I sense it slipping away, and with it the vision that drew me here in the first place—the mission that has constantly, daily animated and energized and guided me through whatever else was happening.

In writing these books I was asking questions that my previous years in the academic world had convinced me were vital to our ongoing health as humans on earth: how does bodily movement matter, why does bodily movement matter, and how and why can and should bodily movement matter in our relationships with our selves, with others, and with the natural world? And on every page, what I wrote about dance and movement was funded and formed by the vibrant life that these children have been creating with us here, on the farm. Now I wonder: what is next?

All around me, as I ponder these leavings, I see fronds browning, stalks shriveling, and seed pods falling. And I wonder. How do the plants feel—letting go of each carefully cut leaf, each red firmed round?

I go for a run on a hard packed dirt road, feeling the sadness. A couple of miles from the house, a deer bursts from the bushes, landing yards before me. I stop short, heart pounding, and remember not to forget. Life will never cease to surprise.

At home I lie down on the hard wood floor and let go. I breathe deeply and let all effort and energy drop away. I stay there, shedding, until a small smile forms in my heart, pulling at my cheeks, nearly breaking through onto my face. But not quite. Beneath it all, I know, there is love. An irrepressible spring of ongoing creation. A rhythm of bodily becoming. A bottomless pool of possibility, Geoff says, that is cooler and more refreshing the deeper you go. I yield to it.

I listen again. In reality, the house is not quiet at all. Three more children await their turn to reach for the sun. Another arc of ten years awaits before two more will leave for college, and then another four years before the youngest goes. They too will have their passions, their stories, and their adventures. What will they want from the farm? What will they pull from me? What will we create together?

Outside, in the garden, the harvest is in full swing. The plants aren’t simply dying; they are giving themselves up. Day to day, we are picking, processing, and putting away the kale, green beans, zucchini, corn and tomatoes that will sustain our bodily selves through the winter. It is abundance, in full force, in all its glory. Concrete. Real. Given and received.

I examine the apple tree on the hill overlooking our house. With every year, its branches gnarl and its bark thickens. Wrinkles form and furrow. Every fall it lets go and gathers inward, only to burst out again in the spring, with ever more crinkly green leaves and newborn blossoms of apples-to-be.

The tree, I imagine, is feeling relief. After all that effort spent reaching to meet, greet, and transform the beating of summer rays and rains, it is letting go of work well done. Perhaps it is smiling.

I sense in my sadness a willingness to let go. It is a season to let go—and even to let go of the sadness of letting go. There are young calves in the barn, and one more soon to come. Pounds of sweet greens are filling the freezer. Seeds are falling upon fertile ground. Kai and Leif are locked in an ongoing love battle. Kyra calmly watches.

Besides, the apples are not falling far. And my deepest wish is that they roll far enough that their seeds find their own upward path to the sun.