Harvest

Now all the farmers from far and wide have gathered their bounty from countryside.                                           Corn and barley from field and wold Honey from beehive and wool from the fold                                                         Fruit from the orchard, all ripe, red and gold.                                                        Log for the fire to keep out the cold

Today we celebrated Harvest. All the kids helped to gather in our pumpkins and we selected our ripest corn to bring in and cook. We made gnocchi from our home grown potatoes. 

The kids have made corn husk dolls and have worked in their harvest books.







Our special dessert is going to be quinces, cooked really slowly on the wood fire so they are nice and red. Yum!



Happy Harvest

Midsummer

Here is our Midsummer in pictures:





Waelburga’s Night



Hail Waelburga’s, we look to you at the coming of the summer

We feel you in the greening of the land
We see you in the growth and colour in the garden

On your night we feel the last night of the Winter
Fight the last fight with the cool and the dark
Race before it bringing warmth and light

On this night we look into that which is coming and that should be
May we face our wyrd with honor and strength

Hail Waelburga, hail the Springtime Goddess



Each Waelburga’s night we cut a generous slice of bread and spread it liberally with butter and honey. We leave it out as an offering to the Windhound in the hope of blessed crops.

It’s lovely to search through the garden and gather as many flowers as we can (not that many at this time of year). We always make up a simply cornacopia of ginger bread and flowers for the neighbors and give them May Day, following Waelburga’s Night.

Eostre

Hooray!! We have completed a whole yearly circle! However, I’ve gotten a little behind in my recording of our blessings. I do love this blessing, there are so many activities to do and who can’t help but love pace egging! We did three lots of it!

Our lovely eggs were coloured with Glob natural dyes purchased from Spiral Garden. They are beautifully bright colours.

We had lots of yummy food too, we loved our eggnog at Yule so much we had to make more (and such an appropriate drink!) we also made delicious palmiers and of course Eostre biscuits. We ate our coloured eggs too.

The sourdough hot cross buns were delicious too as well as the chocolate truffle eggs.

We also made our own Eostre chocolates and the kids each received an Eostre paper mâché egg filled with them. We decided to paint them this year rather than use tissue paper and we happy with our brightly coloured eggs.

Ewemelouc

The season of lights comes creeping in
On cat feet of wind and frost
Her cloak a patchwork of skeleton leaves
With whorls of ice embossed

Kernels of brightness the Winter Crone bears
Like lamplight from faraway towns
As she sweeps overhead, the lustre of Spring
Peeps through the chinks in her gown

The blessings of darkness she carries as well:
The darkness that lives before birth
And that shadow abiding where solace awaits
In the deep dusky bosom of Earth

For this blessing we make little sourdough buns that we bury in the earth where we plant our potato crop. This year we made a lovely plaited loaf that we drenched in milk before burying. Of course we had some yummy food, potato and cheese pasties, homemade custard and caramel bananas that we lit up with brandy.

Yule

Sunne returns! The light returns!
The earth begins to warm once more!
The time of darkness has passed,
and a path of light begins the new day.
Welcome, welcome, the heat of the sun, blessing us all with Her rays.

We had a lovely Yule lunch, these are some of the dishes we feasted on:

Yule Baking

It couldn’t be Yule without baking. I love the biscuits that we make at this time of year. It’s fun to look forward to foods at special times. The only biscuits that I make at this time that I will make through the year are gingerbread and shortbread, otherwise we have to wait a whole year before we can have:
Pfeffernusse
Amaretti
Pebernodder
Snowflake biscuits
They are lovely to share too.

Yule Calender Countdown

We hung up our Yule Calender, a counting down to the big celebration. It is sometimes a bit tricky to get the right balance of treats, craft and activity but I think we did pretty well this year.

It’s fun to start decorating the house at the beginning if June in preparation for the big celebrations. These activities came out of our Calender pocket for the day.

Winternights

When the year is turning to harvest
And the wind invites you to ride
Light fires on every hilltop
And greet those beloved who died

I love this blessing. It is by far my favourite. It’s lovely to sit by the fire and talk about our ancestors drinking our warm lemon and orange spiced punch. I love looking forward to the special foods we associate with each blessing too, at Winternights we have colcannon, fuarag and soul cakes.

This year we played some games, apple bobbing, snap dragon and pass the taper.

We also did some work in our Winternights booklet.

It is the blood of the ancients that runs through our veins, and the forms pass, but the circle of life remains.

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Harvest Home

I have been meaning to write up our Harvest blessing for a while now. We had been watching our garden grow, harvesting blackberries and making preserves. I love this blessing, with the chance to look around us and see the fruits of our labour.

Now all the farmers from far and wide
Have gathered their bounty of countryside:
Corn and barley from field and wold
Honey from beehive and wool from the fold,
Fruit from the orchard, all ripe, red and gold
Log for the fire to keep out the cold

We worked on our Harvest booklets and made corn dollies. We used our homemade mead for the blessing.