The Blueberry Moon went dark yesterday at 2:06am. Today begins the eleventh moon of the year, the Nutting Moon. The Nutting Moon is new between 17 August and 14 September and full between 31 August and 28 September. It is one of two moons that may be dropped to accommodate the wandering Harvest Moon, which is always the moon that reaches full closest to the autumnal equinox. The other potential drop is the Falling Leaves Moon, the twelfth moon in my calendar. This year it was a toss up. The full Nutting Moon is fifteen days from the equinox, as is the next full moon. So since we’ve had a long run of no Nutting Moons, I dropped the Falling Leaves Moon. The next moon will be the Harvest Moon.
But that’s next month. This is the Nutting Moon. This is when the all-important nut harvest gets going. Mast is falling from oaks and beeches. The walnut family — pecans, hickories, butternuts — are ripening and staining the ground with their tannin-rich black skins, which are excellent for dyeing and ink-making. Hazelnuts and chestnuts are bursting out of their spiny shells. There is free food falling from the branches everywhere. But humans are in fierce competition with the rodents for all this windfall. Another complication is that nut production is not even. Some years there is a windfall; some years there is nothing. And it doesn’t correlate with much of anything. Weather can be fine all summer and there may be no nuts. Conversely, it can be desert dry and there may be carpets of mast come autumn. I’ve heard old wives say that nuts fall at the whim of the old mother trees. Some years the matriarchs feel like making nuts and everyone else follows suit. Some years… they don’t.
In my part of the world, this is the last opportunity to make sure the woodpile is sufficient for the winter. It is time to begin closing up the storm windows and trotting out the draft blockers. If you have a furnace, it is time to schedule inspections and to change the filters before turning it on for the winter. The lunation may see some very warm weather. This year we will probably have heat right through the equinox. But do not let that lull you into believing that winter is still far off. The first frost date for my part of the world is September 24th. Yes, we all know that there will be fine weather, but you still can’t plan on it. It’s time to plan on winter.
It’s time to wind down the garden. This year, I hardly got it wound up. So I’ll be leaving what is still alive out there until the frost wipes it out. But I decided to skip the autumn round of beans and peas. It’s too dry for germination, and I don’t have the desire to haul watering cans over there just for the sake of a few legumes. I did plant more greens in the cold frame and some kale under the fruitless cucumbers. (They keep flowering… don’t know why there are no cucumbers… I’m blaming everything on the dry soil.) The last thing to be planted this year will be the garlic after the equinox. But I’m not planting much garlic this round. I don’t eat as much as I used to… mainly because I don’t eat as much pasta as I used to. So I don’t need much more than a couple dozen bulbs for the whole year. I’m also skipping the overwintered carrots and onions. The onions sort of fizzled out, and the carrots made lots of lovely greenery… on stubby and woody roots. I think I can blame this on dryness also, but that’s more because they were under two layers of row cover and went without water for months. If I want to overwinter veg — and I’m not sure I do — then I need a way to get water to the soil without venting the heat out. Which doesn’t really sound plausible… Not without a greenhouse anyway.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac calls this moon the Corn Moon. This year the sweet corn is just starting to show up at the markets now, but most years the corn harvest is over before the end of the Nutting Moon. Dent corn, the corn that is dried and ground into meal (or more commonly livestock feed these days), may still be harvested for weeks to come. But most of the grain harvest should be done well before this moon is full. However, there are many festivals celebrating the end of the grain harvest around this time of the year. Perhaps one of the most entertaining traditions is Crying the Neck.
In Helston (near Penzance in Cornwall), the harvesters gather on the last Friday in August to cut down the last sheaf of grain. This is a perilous labor. The spirit of the grain, of the land, is concentrated in this last standing grain. So the cut is made by chance. There are many varieties of the ritual, but most commonly the harvesters take turns tossing a sickle until someone manages to cut the grain. I suspect this is mostly a case of bludgeoning the wheat, since it seems unlikely that a tossed sickle is going to hit the stalks at the right angle to slice through. Especially with the amount of beer that is normally quaffed at these ceremonies (which makes me wonder how many harvesters get cut instead…). But once the stalks are undeniably down, the last to toss gathers the grain into a sheaf and begins shouting some version of “the neck”. Everyone else takes up the cry and the whole party noisily marches off to the center of town to display the sheaf — and drink more beer.
(For the record, I have no idea where the name comes from. There are so many theories, most of them implausible, all of them conflicting… So, I’ve written it off to just being one of those inexplicable traditions with what rational roots it might have had lost to time… Many games fall into this category…)
There are many other grain harvest traditions, from weaving dollies and naming a Harvest Queen to corn shucking bees. In these latter years, we’ve even made a celebration of grain that is not harvested. Corn mazes are an industry unto themselves these days. In this ritual, corn is left standing on an acre or two, and elaborate paths are cut through the stalks. Most mazes are designed on computer and mapped out with GPS coordinates. There is one in Albuquerque that covers several acres and is carved into such shapes as roadrunners and the Kokopelli. Thousands of New Mexicans troop through the twisted tunnels under the autumnal stars. Most mazes are fairly tame, just a walk through the corn. But you can get lost in that one. Trampled stalks attest to the frustration of taking a wrong turn too many times. In the spirit of the spooky season, many mazes include theatrics to titillate the teenagers. And terrify the tots… It’s best to do corn mazes by daylight if you have little ones.
In any case, the grain harvest is over. The garden harvest is winding down. However, like the nuts, the orchard harvests are gearing up. One of my favorite foods, the cranberry, is harvested in this time. The apple season is well underway. Pears are only just starting to ripen. The grapes are turning purple — if you have grapes. My vines set fruit, only to drop most of it, littering the ground with tiny green nuggets. But in better years, this is when the drupes are so heavy they can break branches if I’m not careful to keep everything well supported. And my apple trees are bearing heavily this year even without much moisture. I’ll be picking them soon, and there will be trips to the orchard for the varieties that I can’t fit into my garden. (Because I love all the apples…)
For humans and most of the green world, this moon is about closing up and gathering in. Most of the leaves will fall off the trees in the next four weeks. For some beings, this is the beginning of migration season. Hummingbirds leave my part of the world in just a week or two. Most of the hibernating creatures are gorging themselves. Groundhogs are so fat by now that they hardly wander more than a few meters from their burrow entrance. Any further, and they wouldn’t be able to run to ground if a predator turned up. They will be the first to bed down, coming out for the last time around Michaelmas.
This moon falls short of the equinox by less than a day, going dark at about 4pm on September 21st. This dark moon will also bring a partial solar eclipse that will be visible in the Pacific Ocean, but not around these parts. The Harvest Moon will be new on the equinox, which falls at 2:19pm on September 22nd. Rosh Hashanah will also begin on the equinox, beginning the Jewish New Year with the passing of the sun into the southern hemisphere.
However, the harvest taking up so much time and energy, there are few other holidays. Today is St Bart’s Day, patron of tanners and butchers, but this saint’s day has mostly become a harvest celebration. One of the longest running fairs — from circa 1133 to 1855 — was the Bartholomew Fair at Smithfield in London. In its latter days it was a hospital fundraiser, but it kept its seasonal color. It has the distinction of being the first place to sell apples coated in honey, the forerunner of caramel apples. (St Bart is also a patron of honeymakers and beekeepers…)
Saturday next is St Fiacre’s Day, the day dedicated to the patron of gardening. I’ve always found this ironic. The patron saint of gardens is honored when the garden is usually a dying mess. But I suppose in places with longer growing seasons, the cabbages and kales and carrots will be growing for weeks to come. And Fiacre comes from Ireland, the land of perpetual green. It never gets that cold… though it never gets that warm either…
In the US, the first Monday in September is Labor Day, a day that is supposed to honor working people, but is celebrated by firing up the barbecue and going to the beach or lake-house for the last time. That is, it is the ritual closing of summer, mostly for people who are wealthier than working class. In these days of late capitalism, most of the working class does not even get the day off… There are sales in the box stores and someone has to keep the grocery stores open. However, bankers are off… I will be celebrating by going down to Brooklyn to visit Son#2. Because what with one thing and another, I haven’t been down there since the beginning of the year… and I miss him…
Later in the lunation, we will celebrate Hildegard of Bingen and St Eustace, but there aren’t many other holidays. Though I suppose the whole harvest season is a holiday, one long pageant of celebration and gathering. So feel free to invent your own traditions.
Just… maybe don’t toss sickles while drinking beer… though I suppose that is in keeping with the Nutting Moon…
©Elizabeth Anker 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 