Spells, Pumpkins and the Deep Mystery of Being
By Steven Martyn Our whole lives we are guided away from the mystery and the magic. Driven away, like sheep from a gate leading to open pasture, driven back down the narrow dark road towards the culling. This is not the way it’s always been, but for centuries now, since the so-called enlightenment, every fibre…
Fall Equinox
As we step through the gate that is the fall equinox (sept 21) it seems here at the farm this year, more than most years, everything is finishing up or starting anew all at once. I imagine this early turning is because of the very hot dry summer we just had. But nothing is just…
Maple Sugaring
Last year, for the first time in thirty years or so, I set up a new sugaring pan in a new forest. What I found most interesting about the process was really questioning each aspect of the set up in relation to what it is I’m looking for in making the syrup. I don’t do…
Grandfather Mullein, The Tall One with Bright Yellow Eyes
I was working with that grand old master Mullein on this misty morning. It wasn’t hot and sunny enough to be harvesting any of the other twenty or so plants that I ‘needed’ to be harvesting, so I was a bit adrift, waiting to see what the weather was going to do, when the wise…
Sophie and the Wolves
Every year, at this time of year I feel we are aligned with the beginning and the end of time. For the Algonquin people in this area, the February moon is known as the Wolf moon. Everything is pared right down. The fat of the land, (which was lean last year) is all gone. Everyone…
Eyebright
We’re just coming up on February and it’s been a long cold winter already. Since I finished the shell on the timber frame I’ve been inside a lot staring at the computer screen. It’s good in one way because it’s forcing me to finish a book on bioregional building, The Hundred Mile House (tentative title),…
35 years of seeding earth wisdom
