AUTUMN

HARVEST TIME | Bringing In The Sheaves

By on Friday, September 21, 2018

Once upon a time in Sweden…

Ah, harvest time, upon the autumn equinox, when the day and night are equal, it feels like you can take a deep sigh after a busy season in the sunshine. The days may start growing darker soon but for now, we celebrate the fruits of our labors.

We aren’t farmers and only amateur gardeners, but this time of year has always resonated with us so strongly. Perhaps because our fairytale mountain wedding took place on the 1st day of fall and we got to celebrate with our loved ones after much preparation and long distance dating.

When we first started blogging about our married life adventures in Sweden we wrote under a much different name than this.  It was called “Tales of Sheaves” and on a beautiful late summer day in Sweden we set out with a basket full of produce and a sickle to take some photos in a field of golden wheat to try to capture the essence of Sheaves.

First of all, sheaves are bundles of grain, reaped and bound together at harvest time when summer is giving way to autumn. Farmers have done this in different ways over the years but we are most fond of the old-fashioned way of tying the crops up in a bundle around the middle.
 
 
It was the old folk song “Bringing In The Sheaves” inspired by Psalm 126: 5-6 that gave us the inspiration for our name and meaning behind it.  To us, Sheaves will always be a symbol of the harvest of sowing, hoping, weeping, rejoicing, and the reaping of dreaming.
 
“Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows,
Fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze;
By and by the harvest, and the labor ended,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.”

 

Think of a farmers life…planting seeds with hard labor, hoping for a good season, weeping when things don’t go as expected, but rejoicing when the crop is ready for harvest. To us, that is HOPE. That is DREAMING. That is LIFE. That is SHEAVES!
 
Essentially our tears, hardships, and trials are the tears that water our “seeds” that will one day blossom into a harvest of rejoicing. Often in the midst of our struggles it’s hard to see a reason for it, it’s hard to find the hope. But also so often we can look back at our hard times during a season of rejoicing and see the good fruit of our hard labors…and oh how much sweeter the fruit is then!

We hope this encourages you, that even if right now you’re in a season of weeping that soon you’ll be reaping that bountiful fall harvest.

Bye For Now,
-Lindsay & Jonas   

P.S. Here’s a few photos from a few summers later in Sweden!

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