Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Women in Agriculture Thoughts on Food Production for International Women's Day We regularly hear about the gender wage gap. We know about glass ceilings and barriers to advancement. We wring our hands over leadership roles filled mainly by men. These are all vital concerns. But today I’d like to address a disparity that doesn’t get… Continue reading The Daily: 8 March 2023
If Candlemas be bright and clear there'll be two winters in the year. — traditional adage from Scotland Of Candles and Divinatory Beasts There are many weather marking days throughout the year. Candlemas, falling on 2 February, was the day that our ancestors began to get nervous about the spring. A fine Candlemas portends a… Continue reading The Daily: 2 February 2023
If Brigid visited your house with a blessing last night, show her your gratitude by beginning your spring cleaning in her honor. If you have a woodstove, today is a good day to clean out the ashes and begin spreading them on your garden beds. (If you live where the soils are already saline, especially… Continue reading The Daily: 1 February 2023
You can achieve wisdom in three ways. The first way is meditation. This is the most noble way. The second way is the way of imitation. This is the easiest and least satisfying way. Thirdly, there is the way of experience. This is the most difficult way. — Confucius (Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom for 29… Continue reading The Daily: 30 January 2023
If Candlemas be bright and clear there'll be two winters in the year. — traditional adage from Scotland There are many weather marking days throughout the year. Candlemas, falling on 2 February, was the day that our ancestors began to get nervous about the spring. A fine Candlemas portends a bad harvest and winter dearth;… Continue reading Candlemas: Spring Forecast
February 1st is Imbolg or St Brigid’s Feast Day. Imbolg is an ancient and somewhat forgotten holiday that falls midway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. Hence it is the first of the four cross quarter days, the days marking the half way points between the solar quarter days (solstices and equinoctes). The… Continue reading Imbolg: Beginning of Beginning
Every religion needs its mythos. I wrote this one a while ago and posted it last year. It seems a good day to share it again. Eve Eve woke up with the birds each morning. The piping and burbling of thousands of little brown birds in the reeds, so numerous in kind they’d not even… Continue reading An EarthCraft Origin Story
Again, a perfectly wonderful book raised my ire by throwing out a tired trope — the assertion that all our societal woes date to the "inception of agriculture" (which phrase is itself a red flag that raises my blood pressure; there is no such point in time or place). This time the claim that farming… Continue reading The Straight Story on Farming
Nine thousand years. Maybe ten. Maybe fifteen. Five hundred generations. Of humans that is. Nine thousand generations of this. Nine thousand years of fields green with three sisters. The gold of tassels, rust of pods, sun orange and berry red of squash. I feel the breath of my ancestors in these gardens, stirring leaves and… Continue reading 9000 Years (Winifred Mumbles)
When I was a teenager, my dad up and moved us from Northern California to Southern Indiana. I was not amused. There is no love lost between me and Hoosier-land, though I did and still do love the caves and karst topography. But I did learn things there. I learned that cow tipping is indeed… Continue reading Making Hay While the Sun Shines
By My Solitary Hearth 