October arrives on the back of the rain. It drums against the kitchen window while the kettle comes to the boil, and it keeps us in the warmth of the kitchen a little longer than we planned. Boots come home caked to the ankle. Out in the fields, the pasture soaks it all up, holding the water in roots that have spent all summer growing deep.

It is the most generous month of the year, if you give yourself time to look. Onions are plaited and hung up to dry. Beetroot comes out of the ground still smelling of the soil. The apple store fills faster than anyone can eat through it, and there is always more than enough to give away. After a wet week, field mushrooms and puffballs appear in the grass almost overnight. Only pick what you can name with certainty, though, because plenty of what catches the eye in a field is best left where it is.

Autumn is the season that asks us to slow down. None of this is found in a hurry. It rewards the unhurried walk, the second look and the pause at the field gate.

Why slowing down matters

Most of us live at a pace that keeps nature at arm's length. We wake behind drawn blinds and travel from front door to car to desk. We can go from morning to night without a thought for the weather, the season or the soil. At that speed, it is easy to forget that we are part of nature, not separate from it.

Yet almost every choice we make touches it. What goes into the shopping basket shapes how land is farmed, how animals are kept and how far our food travels before it reaches the plate. Of all the decisions we make in a day, what we eat is one of the most direct ways any of us has of shaping the countryside.

Supermarket shelves have taught us to expect every ingredient in every month of the year, delivered just in time. Something is lost when we forget how to wait. The first leeks, the first game of the season and the first frost-sweetened parsnips are worth looking forward to precisely because they come and go.

Small, unhurried choices

None of us can be perfect, and we would never ask you to be. But there are things we can all do:

• Eat with the season, and let yourself look forward to what is coming next.
• Buy from people who care for the land, and take the time to ask how your food was produced.
• Waste less. Freeze, pickle and preserve, and cook the whole animal, not just the prime cuts.
• Get outside. Walk a footpath, find a wood, or sit at a field edge ten minutes longer than you meant to.

Time spent slowly outdoors does more than lift the spirits. It changes the way we see our food. It reminds us that we are part of a cycle of soil, grass, animal and table, not perched at the top of a pyramid.

Slowness is also how we farm. Native breeds, slow grown to natural maturity on pasture, by small family farms that work with the seasons rather than against them. This October, we hope you find time to slow down, look around and notice what is right in front of you.

Adapted from The Farm Kitchen by Abby Allen available for purchase here.