Winding Down for Winter
living seasonally, and some recommendations and readings from the archives
Hello and welcome to new subscribers. I am not sure who to thank for the recent flurry of new names, but thank you all for subscribing. I’m happy to have you here.
’Tis the season of merriness and goodwill, and also of winding down for the midwinter break, time to spend with family, feast and be festive! I personally struggle with this time of year, the pressures of social festivities when every fibre of my being wants to cosy down and sleep, when the days are short and dark and the extra physical demands of wintering livestock out on the hill add layers of exhaustion onto the end of year fatigue. My ideal winter break is deep hibernation, to re-emerge refreshed and ready for a new season when the buds begin to burst in early spring. The hyper-commercialisation, forced outward splurging and artificial light of this season that calls for deep rest, stillness, and retreating into the dark leaves me feeling frazzled, disjointed, discombobulated, and deeply fatigued. I know I’m not the only one.
These are some ways I have found to ease that fatigue and disjointedness, and keep my mind and body synced with the season.
I eat seasonally. This isn’t just about supporting local and loading up our plates with whatever fresh veg can be found in season. It’s deeper than that. It’s about giving our bodies the right nourishment for the season, to acclimatise—feed ourselves the stuff our bodies recognise in alignment with the light and climate. Autumn through early winter is time to load up on fats and carbs, and put down a few layers for the cold, hungry months. Nature provides in the autumn glut of nuts, fruits and roots, sugars and starches, and animals fat from the autumn flush. The midwinter feast would have traditionally served to use up all perishables, the last of the harvest, to pack the season’s abundance into our own body stores. Now is not the time to diet. Now is the time to eat like a bear in readiness for hibernation through the dark months. Restoration requires nourishment. That’s why we feast.
I watch the sunrise. No matter what the weather is chucking at us or what I’ve got on for the morning, I make sure the first light to hit my eyes are those circadian regulating infrared and blue morning sun rays. If it’s dark indoors when I’m getting up, I light a candle and use that quiet time to write (on pen and paper, no screens before my eyes and brain adjust to daylight) before the sun rises and my farm rounds begin at daybreak. When I had to get up and out before the sun to get to work or kids to school (and lived in a house with power) I got around that one by using a day light on a timer to come on just before my alarm clock. Not quite the same as a natural sunrise but still a game changer for those dark, dreary mornings. Really, try it.
We are circadian beings, and there is something deeply aligning and restorative about living sun-up to sundown, so on the same note, I watch the sunset. At midwinter, I am outdoors on evening farm rounds catching those salutary, setting sunbeams, whatever the weather, from 3PM until I tuck the goats in as dark falls around 4:30-5PM. Indoors, I let it fall dark naturally, and then our evening lighting is minimal and saved for essential needs like cooking; evenings are long, lamplit, and restful.
I’m writing this as the winter solstice approaches, in the stillness of grey mist and candlelight. By the time it reaches your inbox the shortest day and longest night will have passed, the sun will have made his final descent into the dark and risen again and we will celebrate the birth of a new solar cycle. We are hosting family for Christmas, my husband will be out on a shady mission collecting our Christmas turkey, freshly plucked by her farmer and ready for our feast, and I will be up to my elbows in turkey stuffing.
I am working on an essay for submission to the Nature Chronicles Prize in January and don’t have much time left (nothing like last minute pressure to get those creative sparks firing), so I will be taking a short break from posting on here for a couple of weeks after Christmas while I focus on that. So, for now I want to share some reading (and listening) I have been enjoying from others on here, as well as a couple of older pieces from my own archives for your perusal that you may not have seen if you’re new here, and wish you a happy and peaceful Yuletide.
Hadden Turner is an up and coming young agrarian writer from the UK, and a strong voice in support and defence of our small farms and rural communities built around good agricultural stewardship of the land. I’m sharing just one of his many compelling and well written essays and I strongly urge you to take a browse through his archives on Over the Field, and support him with a subscription if his writing speaks to you. This essay on Navigating Abundance seems particularly apt as we enter the season of excess.
Another writer whose striking, poetic prose I’ve been enjoying, Daniel Firth Griffith writes beautifully and prolifically on the land, rewilding our relationship to it. Daniel’s publication, Denuding the Illusion, also includes a podcast on topics around rewilding and regeneration, well worth a browse. I really enjoyed this episode on community, regeneration, and existing in place, that touches on many of the quandaries we face here as we establish and regenerate our farm, land and livelihood within a new (to us) community.
And lastly, for now, a shoutout to a fellow West Corkian and keeper of traditional, local foodways, Max Jones of Up There The Last. From the Italian Alps to the rain washed, limestone hills of the West of Ireland, Max’s descriptions of food, tradition and place, of landscape into sustenance through the wisdom of local, indigenous practices, are profoundly and deliciously inspiring. I’m sharing here his recent piece on a traditional Irish cattle drive, a sort of upside-down transhumance, from lush, lowland summer pasture to upland Winterage on the Burren, in county Clare.
From my archives, I recently shared my debut essay to mark my first year on Substack, which served as an introduction to the land and our first tentative approach to it. This piece is a sort of follow-up written last December, a few months into our first year of living year round on the land, after a few summers of running stock here, deepening our integration with the land.
This piece feels just as relevant today as it did when I wrote it as we emerged last spring from our first winter on the land, and perhaps especially relevant to the season we’re in. On the difficulties faced by farmers in these times of change, on revolution, living on the land and the nature of giving.
And a short story to finish. I recently shared an Ode to the Oak; this is an earlier story featuring that same, lone oak and the story it tells of forests and ferns and feathered wings…
Lastly, can I ask you a favour? If you like my posts, including this one, please scroll down and hit the “like” button to let me know. Your feedback helps me gauge interest and is hugely encouraging, and helps me figure out what sort of posts you want more (or less) of. I also really appreciate your shares and restacks which help grow my subscriber base and keep me writing. Thank you.
Happy Solstice and Christmas,
Carly
I am thankful that there are social media accounts that encourage and promote the old ways, instead of more of everything. I live on a small farm in the midwestern US and although the context is different, the values are the same. My grandparents lived a very simple life on this farm more than 100 years ago and I am glad I have their example. I hope I'm passing it on to my children and grandchildren.
I love these glimpses into your deeply soulful ways of living. Thank you for your dedication to the Old Ways.