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Beginning of Fall

September 22, 2012

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Profile America -- Saturday, September 22nd. As of 10:49 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time today, it's autumn. It's a time for football games, Halloween, and cooler temperatures, including the first frost of the season. It's also when trees become decked out in glorious colors and birds begin to migrate. And it's time for the annual harvest of whatever this year's drought allowed to ripen. In the past, this meant entire families helped to bring in the crops to get ready for winter. Up until 1920, more people lived on farms than in cities. That year's census showed there were about 6.5 million farms in the U.S., feeding a population of just over 100 million people. Today, advances in agriculture are such that about one third as many farms provide food for a population nearly three times that of 1920. Profile America is in its 16th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources: Chase's Calendar of Events 2012, p. 464
Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, p. 457