Lammas is coming

Lammas is coming

So whether you call it Lammas or Lughnasadh or Harvest for us in the Northern Hemisphere the fruits of what we have sown are now ripening. It is a delicate time. Storms are a plenty, but when the sun shines or the night is still and cool it feels like it could last forever.
I told you all about the big blackberry haul that N and mini witch and myself got in the cooling twilight of the weekend. We did indeed, need more bourbon. It was a messy job that TK and I did last night. The sorting and rinsing in rum before adding to jars with brown sugar, shaking and then adding the bourbon. I used up a whole roll of kitchen paper! The first batch we bottled and it looks good! I now have to figure out what to do with the pickled fruit from the first batch. TK said a pie (but he always does.) I thought maybe a jam or chutney.

They are already looking good and I imagine the cup for Lughnasadh rites will be amazing. I may even bake if the weather keeps cool. The wheat and barley harvest, or corn as it is still called in Britain, has already begun. Traveling back from the baby shower a few weeks ago the good hot weather had ripened most fields and some where half harvested or just fields of pale stubble. There is something magickal about it. Oh it is hot and dusty and makes you cough but when the corn pours like water into the barn, or moves like the ocean at sunset in the breeze there is something to it. Corn husks and dust hurt the eyes something fierce and the dust coats the skin that is usually red or tanned or a mix of both with a dull cream coating.
Some folks take a gentle approach to harvesting. Letting it come to them. This has never been my experience of harvest. It was something you had to get up and get. To work hard for. To sing and pray and hope the weather stayed right and laugh and drink and dance when it did.
Sure my runner beans won't be quite so difficult (SO looking forward to eating them). Or the lettuce growing so easily in the tub. Yet I remember. The work, the hard but good work that made you tired but also made you feel clean some how. It is like chopping wood or tending the garden.
When I celebrate my harvest I will hold this in my heart and mind. When I dust the table with flour I will remember that someone grew it. Someone cared and wished and hoped for the right weather. They may not have drunk tea with whiskey in it from chipped mugs when they were done. But I will remember them and honour them all.