Full Moon Feast (Food and the Hunger for Connection) Pub: Chelsea Green Publishing.
AS WE DRAW nearer to the Winter Solstice* fires are being lit, big pots of soup (or porridge) are slowly simmering on the stove and our thoughts turn more inward. Winter Solstice is interpreted by many cultures as a recognition of rebirth. At the Winter Solstice we have the promise of spring; the seed promises the fruit; the child promises the adult of the future.
Living in a sub-tropical climate makes it more difficult, perhaps, to synchronise with the seasons – the shifts are subtle and our growing season topsy-turvy, with winter encouraging many people to get out into the garden. In my garden, the tomatoes are fruiting, passionfruit, cucumber, eggplant and herbs abound. Soon we will have strawberries again! In my sister’s garden, in Hobart, the pot plants have been brought in and her vegetable garden mulched as they wait for the first frost.
In Jessica Prentice’s book ‘Full Moon Feast’, which divides the year into 13 lunar cycles of an agrarian year, late autumn is the time of The Moon of Long Nights, a time of darkness… The West African Dagara people believe that darkness is sacred – it is forbidden to illuminate it, for light scares the Spirit away. Our night is the day of the Spirit and of the ancestors, who come to us to tell us what lies on our life paths.
I wonder how much darkness most people experience in their busy, artificially lit lives. I find at this time that I want to eat my evening meal earlier, go to bed earlier and rise with the sun. Much has been written about the need to pay more attention to our natural rhythms and cycles – for example, our circadian rhythm and menstrual cycle – and we know how damaging it can be when those rhythms are interrupted or ignored. However, many people have disconnected from the most basic of rhythms around them, the lunar cycle in particular.
One branch of food production, biodynamics, takes the celestial rhythms as their guide. Biodynamic agriculture was inspired by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who founded Anthroposophy (‘Wisdom of Man’). Biodynamic practitioners seek to understand and work with the life processes as well as enhance their understanding of the mineral processes used in conventional agriculture. They are fundamentally concerned with the health of the soil, being the basis for healthy plants, animals and people.
A central concept is that few outside materials are brought onto the farm, but all needed materials such as manure and animal feed are produced from within what he called the “farm organism”. In other words, they aim for a closed system. Biodynamics, like all good agriculture, relies on observation and reflection to gain an understanding of the elements of that system, as well as an appreciation of the system as a whole – that which exists above the ground in the light, and that which exists below the ground in the dark. It requires the practitioner to slow down and be more mindful – to project our thoughts into that which we cannot see.
As Jessica Prentice suggests, on the Moon of Long Nights, may we begin to be a little more comfortable with the dark, and the mystery it symbolizes. May we remember to sleep, to rest, and to dream.
* The Winter Solstice occurs exactly when the Earth’s axial tilt is farthest away from the sun – it is widely understood to occur on the shortest day, and longest night.
Julie Sheldon (Slow Food Sunshine Coast Hinterland)
Leave a Reply