Friday 21 September 2018

Autumn Equinox and second harvest

When the Autumn Equinox with its momentary equilibrium is upon us, we know it's time to prepare for colder darker days to come. It's also second harvest and as we gather in the fruit harvest our minds are naturally drawn to begin a mental audit of what's gone before. What's our year been like? Have we achieved the things we'd planned, and did any of the seeds of our ideas we planted in Spring take, and how many came to fruition? Equinox blessings y'all.

With the fruit harvest in mind, over our common are a few feral apple trees, domestic fruit trees that have found freedom. Some of these trees have been barren for a couple of years now, whilst others produce a bounty of nice edible fruits each year. What never ceases to amaze me is that year on year I appear to be the only one person who utilizes these trees. Why? Have we become so conditioned to getting our food in shops that we can't bring ourselves to break the habit and forage? We collected from the wild for a lot longer than shops have serviced our needs. Or is it that we've just lost our connection to the land, to the seasons and to the joys of an apple straight of the bough. Sad as that is, it's a bonus to me, more apples going free. Carrying on the theme, year on year I see fewer people collecting Blackberries, and honestly, I've not seen children picking for years, all the pickers I see are my age or older. The connection to the land has been broken, a sad state of affairs for sure, and dangerous for both us and the land herself, no connection will inevitably translate to no protection in time.

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