It seems that today is a day of me leaning on the creativity and inspiration of others! Glad we have each other. Jason's winter solstice meditation never seems to get old. It feels relevant each and every year, and so we read it together annually before lighting our biochar burn fire. We did so again this past Thursday!
We Kindle this Fire: A Winter Solstice Meditation
We kindle this fire for gratitude. The wood we have gathered to burn is the flesh of plants, our partners and providers on this earth. We gratefully acknowledge that we need them more than they could ever need us.
We kindle this fire for memory. We know that without fire, our species could never have become what we are. To be human is to burn wood; to use its power to change things to our advantage.
We kindle this fire for light. Through the plants and like the plants, we need light: to fully understand our world our eyes need to see it reflecting off of our landscapes, and we need it striking our skin to promote our health. Even in our languages, light is truth and shadows are ignorance. In this shadow time of year, the light leaping from this fire will be a comfort
We kindle this fire for warmth. As flames spring from the branches burning here, we will eagerly hold our palms out to face them like leaves, absorbing a small fraction of the heat released there. This world is our home and we know no other, but it can be a cold place, too.
We kindle this fire for life. As the smoke rises, we will be reminded that life changes form; it is always being lost and destroyed, it is always being reborn. The char that is left will be used to enrich the soil—a stable place to store nutrients and habitat for soil organisms.
We kindle this fire for healing. In these times too many of us are neglecting our connections to the soil, to the plants, to the Sun. Our willful ignorance has cost us so much; has been so destructive. We hope that this one small act of burning a char fire can be a part of a trend of restoration.
We kindle this fire for our descendants. Like trees stretching their roots into the forest duff made of the decaying bodies of their progenitors, we too live by the gifts of our ancestors to us; gifts of resources and knowledge, skill and values that were a response to their time and place. We have adapted these for our time in this place, and we know our descendants must do the same. With this fire we mark our desire to leave to them a world that supports their thriving at least as well as it has ours, and our willingness to work to make it so.
For gratitude, for memory, for light, for warmth, for life, for healing, for our descendants, here and now, we kindle this fire.
Thursday morning while the younger girls and I baked and made popcorn strings with Luca for the winter solstice, Kali and Jason emptied the biochar pit of duff and chicken litter onto plants.
In the afternoon the 5 of us, along with my dad and Jonathan for part of the time, turned the brush pile into char! This morning Jason emptied the first humanure bucket into the new pit and so the transformation from char to biochar is underway!
As we drug the last brush to the fire, the chickens were in the wings ready to play and scratch in the remaining duff. For them "it's the most wonderful time of the year!"
As the sun set we walked up and over our hill to our neighbor's winter solstice celebration. While there, my cracked cell phone screen turned partially black and partially like an out of control strobe light. There are many things to feel grateful for (a very kind person at Boost Infinite that helped me and our eldest who enjoys figuring out electronic devices much more than doing dishes), but generally the day ended with a mad scurry to Best Buy, a quick purchase of a phone and up late figuring out a new device. This felt very urgent as I had a new mama experiencing some pregnancy complications and I needed to be reachable. I really hate being so dependent on something I have no interest in figuring out...The chicken flock evaluation for 2023 is officially complete, as is the final butchering of the year. The root cellar and freezers are at their peak fullness. I just topped off a shelf in the root cellar with yesterday's chicken broth canning and I managed to find enough crevices in our freezer for the chicken ponhoss.
I will close with something that I think will bring a smile to many faces. Even Jason gushed more than I'm used to hearing come out of him when I showed him what present I had found for Mom. He said, "How can that be sooo cute?!" We are not in the habit of buying presents for anyone (other than our kiddos). But if inspiration hits, I often go with it. I find buying presents because it is the thing you are supposed to do very laborious. I find getting a present that you find that just has a person's name written all over it delightful!
Our regular dinners upstairs with my parents are rarely photographed because they are just a part of our weekly rhythm. But they are sweet times of connecting, sharing food, often a game... I feel so grateful to be doing life together - in mundane and special times.
Speaking of special times, after I napped up following an all night birth, our family went on a little outing to Bella Gelato (to use a gift card from dear friends) and then to see a Christmas light show. Even in the rain, it was really fun (except for the one horrible Christmas song on the FM station the lights were programmed to - sadly it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth about the whole thing...)
We had a fun evening with Jonathan, Christen and Luca this week, complete with a white elephant gift exchange. I think Jason's gift of a "goose back scratcher" won the prize for generating the most laughter and long lasting entertainment for us all.
Kali's package included some costume pieces from the American Shakespeare Center that they got when they volunteered helping organize their costume room. They are still enjoying being volunteer ushers very much and Jason and I benefitted this week by getting in on using free comp tickets to see A Christmas Carol with Alida and Kali.
Yesterday we enjoyed visiting with two of Jason's sisters and families around the fire ring. We were also thoroughly entertained watching our piggies savor the last scraps from the chicken butchering. Several people noted feeling full just watching them eat and eat and eat some more! It's now time to end this post as we are off for a hike to Hensley's Pond with them this afternoon as the sun tries to peek through the clouds.
The cliff notes version of this story is as follows: I was buying canning lids. I needed to buy something else to get free shipping. I looked in the clearance section. I found a felt snowman basket with 10 snowman ornaments. It was discounted (about $7) and my mom HAD to have it. I bought it. The order came. The basket was not included. I emailed them. She said she put the snowman ornament inside something else. It was there. But where was the basket and 9 other ornaments? I emailed again. Their website description had been wrong. They offered to honor my order. They needed some time to amass the 9 ornaments and basket. They sent it to me for free. You can't find/buy that item anywhere anymore. Its purchase value would have been well over $100. It's perfect for Mom. She has been doing show and tell with it to friends. She left it at Gift and Thrift by accident. It was found by a friend before it got sold and is now safely home again!
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