Post Harvest
After the forced slowing of 2020 our community has emerged hungry for action, creation and collaboration. Despite the fertile spring imagery you may have seen in the Easter aisles of your local Woolies, this time of year in our hemisphere is post-harvest, a time to preserve the crops that grew in great abundance during the increased warmth and energy of the summer season and to prepare for the slow descent into darker days and longer nights. In my own kitchen, I have apple cider bubbling away in big glass vats, harvested in early autumn from the apple orchards of my in- laws. Out of the cider I will make immune boosting cider vinegar tinctures to keep the body strong through the more taxing winter months. In older cultures, a portion of cider was offered back to the strongest tree of the orchard to ensure a bountiful season the following year, cycles following cycles.
As we now wake to dripping windows and the first morning frosts, we find ourselves with less time out and about making the most of long summer evenings. We start to cosy up, cultivating our 'higge' and discovering more time to create. As our community garden has started to slow its production, we look back at a bountiful season ripe with tomatoes, beans, strawberries, sunflowers and zucchini. So too have we seen an abundance of ideas from our community take form out in the world. This time of harvest was especially potent after the long slow gestational period of last year's calm, where, in those contemplative waters, new possibilities could bubble and swirl.
This time of year in the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung language is called Birrang Tonimbuk. As the wombats begin renovating their burrows, the arrival of the morning mists and cool yet drier weather told the local people that it was time to start the year's burn off patterns. Some areas were burnt every year whilst other areas were burnt on a multi year cycle in accordance with cultivation strategies and the totemic system. These highly complex and patterned firestick farming schedules ensured the land was managed and cultivated with deep care, folding in ancient systems of knowledge. In return, the land supported the people, creatures, plants and fungi for tens of thousands of year, or, since time immemorial as it is understood in Indigenous ways of knowing.
May we listen to First Nations voices as we attempt to reconnect with ourselves, rebuild our communities and regenerate the land upon which we work, live and play. May we listen deeply as we create and offer our works to the world.
🌿 If you’d like to keep reading seasonal reflections like this, along with parenting musings, creative rituals, and invitations to tap into overlapping ecological and imaginal worlds.`
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