Autumn on the Farm: Between Breath and Stillness
Autumn arrives quietly here on the farm — not with drama, but with a slow exhale. The horses are the first to feel it. Their coats thicken and their bodies seem to listen more deeply to the land as the air cools. There is something ancient in the way horses meet the change of season: calm, unbothered, rooted. They simply accept the turning of the world.
Morning mist settles low along the paddocks, wrapping everything in a silver hush. I walk out with warm hands around a mug. Autumn light is different — golden, restrained, a little nostalgic. It feels like a memory even as it happens.
Life on the farm begins to slow in a way that feels natural, inevitable, and comforting. The wild pace of summer riding gives way to gentler routines. There’s peace in the smallness of these moments.
The land changes too. Leaves fall like quiet confetti, gathering in the corners of the stables. Apples bruise sweetly in the grass. The smell of earth becomes deeper, damp and grounding. Each day is a little shorter, asking us — in a language older than words — to rest sooner, to push less, to soften into the season.
Autumn teaches a kind of honesty. You see the world as it is: stripped back, unadorned, preparing. And the horses mirror this truth. They don’t fear the cold coming; they simply shift into it, accepting the rhythm of nature with an ease we humans often forget.
As winter’s breath edges closer, I find myself taking cues from them. Moving slower. Speaking quieter. Letting stillness feel like a choice instead of surrender. The farm becomes a place of inward turning — of warm lights in the early evenings, of thick blankets and the comforting weight of routine.
This season is a reminder that not all beauty is loud, and not all growth looks like movement. Sometimes the most meaningful transformations happen in the pause — in the soft middle-space between the blaze of summer and the quiet blanket of winter.
Here, with the horses, autumn is not an ending.
It is the deep inhale before the long, peaceful winter exhale.
photos by dear husband Krišjānis Piliņš 2025
