Seasonal Smallholding Rituals

WNT founder Jennie Duck explores the seasonal visitors, tasks and activities that are becoming rituals that mark the passing of the months for her and her family.

We have a couple of jackdaws that come to nest in the wall of our workshop every year. The first couple of years we lived here they drove me crazy, I was only aware of them when I came out of the workshop door and they suddenly flapped away. I’m a bit squeamish with flappy birds (ironic for a Duck I realise) and the fact that I forgot every time and then it gave me a sudden fright meant that I often ended up swearing and cursing them.

Then I learned something that changed my approach entirely. I learned that jackdaws mate for life and that they return to the same spot each year to have their babies. I learned that they are so clever (in my arrogant human terms) that they recognise specific people and choose to trust them. In this I learned that they trusted me, despite my cursing, and that they felt ours was a safe haven for their precious young.

I also learned – or rather realised – that this was a seasonal thing, that their arrival marked the beginning of spring and that their arrival would be quiet at first but as the weeks went on we would begin to hear little chirps of their babies and those chirps would get louder as the babies got bigger.

I still get the occasional fright if my mind is elsewhere when I go out that door on a May morning, but this is totally diminished now by the delight in hearing those little chirps, a delight my 2 year old daughter shares. We are now very fond of Maw and Paw Jackdaw as we call them and I hope we’ll keep seeing them for some years yet.

This annual ‘event is part of a host of things that are now now becoming rituals in our life on a rural smallholding. Before we moved up here we had imagined all the things we would be doing – planting, growing, keeping chickens and goats, making our own preserves etc etc. And then life intervenes with all the things it brings to interrupt our fantasies and we do not have goats or chickens, my veg patch is currently ¼ it’s intended size, the greenhouse is out of action and the polytunnel is full of aphids causing blackened cucumber plants, so sometimes I don’t think we are ‘smallholders’ in a true sense at all.

However, with my kinder eyes I see the little rituals that we have developed that my kids enjoy getting involved with and how, gradually, without our forcing them, they have become annual events that mark the passing of seasons, the children growing older and are little touchstones for us. And also fun things that keep us well oiled, fed and juiced for the rest of the year 😊
Some of these are:

• Picking elderflower in May and making cordial for drinking or making ice lollies
• Picking roses from our wonderfully aromatic rose bush in June and infusing oil that lasts the rest of the year for my skin
• June brings strawberry harvest and the beginning of pea season that has us all popping pods obsessively for a good couple of months, or more depending how well I did at planting stage!
  
• Picking Calendula that I started growing in 2018 and it now self-seeds rampantly with a beautiful array of yellows and oranges scattered through the veg patch, then using this to make calendula oil (equally vibrant in colour) for baths and skin and a fantastic calendula salve for cuts and scrapes that we also call ‘bum balm’ as it is a great nappy rash protector / healer
• July also brings the ripening of raspberries that are littered through our garden and as we get to the end of the month the gooseberries kick in – we have some enormous bushes so we eat these daily, and use them for jam as well as blackcurrants and redcurrants
  
• If we’ve left enough elderflower heads there’s elderflower syrup to be made in late summer as the brambles get going and we come home from walks purple with faces and fingers
• Apples are next and these go to eating straight up and then we’re into crumble season and some apple jam
• My husband, Wayne, is the jam maker and he also makes wines with brambles, apples, rhubarbs and gooseberries
  
• I’m the veg grower and preserver, so if I’ve gotten on well with squash we get some of this baked so we have pumpkin pie filling ready for Christmas and I get stuck into preserves in Autumn – usually some tomato chutney with whatever is left and then fermented chilli sauce and pickled beetroot are favourites

Add to this the ‘opening up’ of early spring when we start planting seeds and preparing beds and the ‘closing down’ of late Autumn when we clear older crops and mulch the beds for next year and we do really get a sense of living with the seasons and the passing of the years.

From discussions with the WNT team and exploring the idea of rituals as more enriching than habits,  my yearning now is that these annual events or duties can be firmly approached as rituals so that we are doing them with intention and attention and reaping even more reward than soothed skin and tasty preserves 😊