Here’s to waking up to misty mornings and lighting the woodstove. And to buckets filling up with rainwater, and to an extra layer of clothes, and to fire cider and herbal elixirs macerating on the shelves. Here’s to ripe acorns falling on my head as I cuddle my sheep, and to wet socks too.
Here’s to cold days and warm sourdough bread with salted butter. Here’s to another gardening season of slow growth but steady rooting. Here’s to Autumn.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a garden in this month type of post, so I wanted to share where things are this season and which tasks have kept me busy!
We’re currently in that liminal time in between growing seasons. Most of the Summer crops have died and been tossed in the compost, and the winter crops are still tender and growing. At the moment, we’re still harvesting the last of summer’s zucchini and spinach and starting the harvest of various lettuce and cabbage leaves. Cut flowers are still gracing our kitchen bouquets.
In late September, I’ve spread a good layer of compost and new mulch over the garden beds. I then turned most of them into brassica land, as to say. But really, there are seedlings of broccoli and different types of kale, Brussels sprouts and mustard, radishes, savoy cabbage, and some other local varieties. Cabbages do so well in our climate during autumn and winter, producing abundant leaves both for us and the animals, so it’s an easy choice for the season.
The beds closest to the house are not so much for vegetables as they are for aromatics and flowers, so this season, we’ve spread a generous quantity of compost over them, too. Not kitchen scraps compost, like in the rest of the garden, but from our compost toilet. I’m always pretty excited about using what comes from our compost toilet and truly, radically closing the loop when it comes to soil — I don’t plan on trading our compost toilet for a flush toilet anytime soon!
Of course, with the wet season now in full swing, it’s time to start another of our yearly tasks — Land clearing! Seven years later, and we’re still cutting down the overgrown so-called invasive trees and clearing undergrowth, holding space for diversity and native species. It’s a long and tiresome job, but it's pretty magical to see how the space opens up and breathes and new plants root down. If you’ve been here for a while, you may remember how rewarding this yearly task feels to us (and I’ve just found this cute ass post from a few years ago where I did some before/after comparisons. I had forgotten how crowded everything was before!).
If there’s a thing I’ve learned in a decade of gardening and Land stewardship, it is that everything is connected, even the seemingly distant elements of the web. Rain, spider, bone, and soil. Leaf, flower, butterfly, and acorn. Olive, stone, worm, and sun. Mycelial relationships, visible and unseen, carried by words or wordless chatter, connecting all elements of a neverending equation.
I’m reminded of this when the world feels heavy, and grief fills up my lungs. I’m also reminded of the importance of rest, echoed these days by the misty landscape around me. Rest is resistance, and joy is resistance, and so is action, too.
As a reminder of the power carried in small actions, and a celebration of the many elements in the reciprocal ecosystems we inhabit, I’m linking arms with some friends for a mutual aid raffle with the goal of supporting those in need of solidarity and urgent medical care in critically affected Gaza.
The raffle winner will receive the following items, lovingly put together by all of us:
You Give Me Fever loose leaf tea, by Cedar Hill Homestead
A signed copy of The Wild Craft, by yours truly!
A signed copy of Our Kindred Home, by Alyson Morgan
Green Goddess Salve, by Farai Harreld
Digital Note Taking for the Organized Home course, by Meagan Rose Wilson
Quilted Oven Mitt, by Little Hen Shop
Here’s how you can enter the raffle (it’s easy!):
1. Make a donation of $5 or more to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF)
2. Take a screenshot of your donation receipt
3. Submit your screenshot via this form
This raffle ends on October 31st at 11:59 EST. The one (1) winner will be contacted via e-mail. Please share away!
Good luck, everyone. Thank you for your generosity!