Harvest Season

I see harvest feast season as the time between the Celtic New Year and the Gregorian New Year.  This means, form Halloween through Christmas, food suddenly becomes much more interesting for me because I’m thinking about fall bounty: fruits, nuts, squash and all the other seasonal flavors that bring thoughts of warm nourishment and cozy times.  

Thanksgiving is a very problematic holiday for all the reasons that are popularly known and many that are less so.  However, despite its origins, the idea of a late autumn harvest feast is not new.  This whole season is a time to celebrate harvest, and there are harvest foods, ceremonies and festivals in every culture.  Sometimes, harvest celebration is also about making up your own new traditions.

Normally, tonight my sisters and I would be helping our mother bake pies for Pie Night.  That’s right, the day before Thanksgiving we have a meal just made of pies.  Pumpkin, Fruit, Tarts, Pot pies, hand pies…you name it.  All the pies.  

There’s something about rolling out pie dough for a French galette or an apple pie that makes me feel connected to the older ways of getting food.  The kind of food that was gathered seasonally because we didn’t have refrigerators.  We couldn’t just pop down to the store to buy imported mangos or greenhouse strawberries.  For many of our ancestors, the relationship to food was more direct and immediate.  A good harvest was something to celebrate, to pray for, to honor.  In our consumer culture, it’s easy to forget the preciousness of food.  Even while so many in our own country are going hungry.

Beekeeping gives me a sense of that preciousness.  Caring for the bees in a bee-centric model usually means I get less honey.  Some years I don’t get any at all.  Therefore, when I do harvest a small amount from the bees it is always an utter delight.  Something worth savoring.  Something precious.  Something to celebrate.  It makes me think of those special moments when you get to enjoy something that was grown with care over time.  Something that is only available certain times of the year.  It’s not so very different than gardening.  Each potato you dig up from your garden is a jewel.  You feel an elation and giddiness and the excavation.   You immediately want to make something delicious to share with someone you love.  It’s the same with honey.  Why savor it yourself, when you could share that first fresh bite of harvest with your sister?  This is the spirit of feasting I try to cultivate when gathering with family and friends each November.  There is a delight in sharing good food.  To offer someone a taste of something delicious is aways a way to celebrate life.  It reminds us that no matter how hard it is, in this moment, there is honey. 

That being said, we can’t savor the honey, nor share the bounty, without coming to terms with the legacy of devastation and displacement colonialism brought to this nation.  We can not feast with out also acknowledging the lie that this holiday represents.  Yes, it may be a step to see is more as an opportunity to celebrate harvest, but not at the cost of turning away from the reality of what this day means.  We can, I think, do both.  We can honor ancestral traditions and make new ones.  We can celebrate the bounty of the earth and honor the first people’s of this bit of earth that we inhabit.  We have to make something new out of something old and broken.  A different way of honoring life and the earth stewardship that is required of us going forward.  Part of stewardship of place is honoring the people of that place.  All of this is in my heart as I pass by Pie Night without any pies, and wonder just exactly when I’m going to roast that pumpkin on the altar.

P.S. just for good measure here’s a ridiculous video of my mother and I dorking out in the kitchen a decade ago: