If you ask people in the community what fall feels like to them, and the memories it brings back, many of them smile, like kids reaching for hot chocolate.

The best thing about fall for Jane Houf is the colors, especially the trees. “The yellow, orange, red, and even brown are all so warm and comforting to me. The cooler weather gives me more energy after the heat of the summer. In this way, I find it much like spring.”

She went on to share that because of her years as an educator, fall is also a lot like spring because it always means a new beginning for the school year.

For farmers like Richard Lierheimer, he loves something different about each of the seasons. For him it is more a matter of the way the shape of the work shifts with the change in seasons. As fall comes on, the time spent on spraying and clearing brush throughout the summer gives way to working on the bookkeeping and starting to plan out the next year. Lierheimer also admits that with less time walking the fields, he has a chance to slowly start catching up on some of the farm and agricultural economics journals that have slowly buried a portion of his desk over the summer.

The change in reading habits also came through in talking with Diana Henage. She shared that as the last of hot, sunny days  quietly slip into crisp, cold mornings of heavy dew she is beckoned outside for walks that often lead her back home to “a warm cup of tea and a book under a cozy throw that entice me away from house chores.” For Henage, fall also brings back memories of peeling apples and making apple butter, warm flannel shirts, and, even now, “Still there is that feeling of distant hope for a snow day that might call off school.”

Of course, many people’s thoughts turn to Thanksgiving as kind of a defining feature of fall. That made it all the more interesting to talk with Michelle Morrison, who you might know as the upbeat barista at Sailor’s Brew. She shared that fall in England, where she is from, tends to be wet and rainy, which makes it feel much colder than here, but an even bigger change for her is getting an extra holiday between Halloween and Christmas, in the form of Thanksgiving. Talking with her and Lori Hopkins, the owner, they both laughed to admit that they feel a little like star players for getting everyone their pumpkin-spice-latte fix as fall settles in.