The Healing Power of Winter: A Meditation on Impermanence

 

"There is a kind of silence that only comes in winter on a farm.

The fields rest. The soil sleeps. And if you are quiet enough, you can hear the land breathing—slowly, deeply—the way we all need to sometimes.

Here on the Connecticut shoreline, where this farm has stood since 1909, we have learned what nature teaches those who stay long enough to listen: there is power in the fallow time. There is healing in the quiet."

In winter, the farm strips down to its bones. The stone walls that have lined these fields for over a century emerge from the summer tangle. The old trees stand revealed. Everything non-essential falls away, and what remains is honest.

This is what the land teaches, if we let it: there is beauty in the fallow time. There is purpose in rest. The pause between harvests is not emptiness—it is preparation. It is the ground gathering strength for what comes next.

A farm is a long lesson in impermanence.

Seasons turn. Crops come and go. Helpers arrive and eventually move on. Barns that stood for generations come down, their wood stacked and waiting to become something new. Children grow up and scatter into their own lives. The hands that do the work grow older.

And still—the roots hold.

Perhaps impermanence is not the opposite of home. Perhaps it is what makes home possible. The coming and going. The planting and harvesting. The holding on and the letting go.

The maple buckets go out on the old trees each late winter, just as they did for the generations before us. The sap rises. The cycle begins again. What looks like stillness is actually quiet preparation—the trees gathering what they need, the soil rebuilding itself beneath the frost.

Even the compost steams in the cold air—warmth rising from what is breaking down, becoming the foundation for next year's growth. Decay and renewal are not opposites. They are the same gesture, made with open hands.

 

With the turning of the seasons, the land teaches us there is beauty to be found in change, impermanence, and in letting go.

We think we come to a farm for the tomatoes, the flowers, the harvest. But maybe what we are really seeking is this: permission to rest. Reassurance that the fallow times are not failures. Evidence that the land endures—not unchanged, but continuous. 

Rooted. Still here.

 

Walk outside today if you can. Let the winter air fill your lungs. Notice what is still standing. Notice what has been let go.

The fields will wake again. The seeds will find their way to the light. But for now, there is grace in the waiting.

There is medicine in the quiet.

Rooted in Madison since 1909, Barberry Hill Farm stewards the coastal land our family has cherished for five generations.