Hello. I really enjoyed this excerpt. The writing is beautifully evocative and I found your narrator's voice compelling and believable. I would definitely want to learn more about her situation and her dilemma.

I agree with Pat about the occasional distancing effect, to which the solution in most cases is simply to trim some of the 'explaining' words rather than any major re-write. And I think occasionally the text could be made even stronger with a judicious pruning - perhaps just 'October to December' would serve as well as 'the end of October to the end of December' for example - or the removal of redundant descriptors - 'generous' is already implicit in 'bounty of fruit', for instance, so could perhaps be removed.

But I think this is really good. Thank you for sharing it!