Harvest Home 2009
September 21st, 2009The Wheel of the Year rolls on. This is Harvest Home, also called Mabon, the second of three harvest festivals. Lammas or Lughnasa is the first one at the beginning of August. It’s the Festival of First Fruits. For me, as I said in “Lammas 2009″, Lammas is fair season: gigantic vegetables, prize-winning pies, truck-pulls, the midway, the beer tent, and the politicians tents. Harvest Home is the corn harvest, and Samhain or Halloween is traditionally the meat harvest
Being a City Witch, I will not be celebrating a silo full of grain, nor will I be slaughtering hogs in October–although I do have a book that tells me step-by-step how to do that. (If you ask nice, I might dig it out and outline the procedure for you.) I’ve had to re-interpret Harvest Home for my reality. For me the corn harvest means investing for the future. Now that the Stock Market is looking up, I’ve rebalanced my pitiful 401K. I’m looking at refreshing my job-hunting wardrobe. I am getting ready to winterize the apartment.
For me Harvest Home is also about investing in the next generation. I’m a little sad that Woodruff High School is closing–I’m an old Averyville girl, and my parents graduated from Woodruff two decades before I did. Kingman Grade School is gone also. But I think the school board has made the right decision. I think Manual and Peoria High School should survive.
I think health care reform is a crucial investment in the next generation. It’s been 100 years coming. I think it’s a crucial investment in my generation. I couldn’t afford Cobra when I lost my job–not even with the federal subsidy. I currently have Aflac “if I’m hurt and can’t work” and I bought into the catastrophic illness package, but I doubt if i can continue with the catastrophic.
But Harvest Home is a festival of thanksgiving! I have been relishing fresh produce from the farmers markets, and I’ve been to Tanners and Apple Blossom Farm. I celebrated the New Moon this weekend with a fabulous omlet–onion, spinach, yellow and orange bell peppers, garlic snaps, shrimp and cheese. Major yum! And I am thinking squash tomorrow night with an apple-peanut butter filling–and a nice red wine.
Among the Ancient Celts, the “cross-quarter days”–the solstices and the equinoxes–were springboards for the greater fire festivals six weeks later. So Harvest Home is the launch for Samhain, which is considered by many as the Pagan New Year. This is the one of the times when the Veil Between the Worlds is at its thinnest and we can commune with our ancestors and with the Spirit World. Many people mistakenly think that there was a god of death called Samhain (and that’s actually pronounced “Sow-en”) but the Celtic means simply “the end of summer” or “the beginning of the dark months.” So as I give thanks for the harvest, I will be turning my thoughts toward my departed and the beginning of a new year.


