Feeling full of fall
My soul has been washed clean with apple cider and I’m feeling grounded in the season in a way I have not for two years.
We live in an area that usually has a festival for every thing. The end of winter is ushered out with Maine Maple Sunday, Spring is celebrated with a festival for the alewives (which are a fish, not women serving beer…though it does involve a fair amount of beer), summer is a series of fruit based festivals that come back around to Maine Apple Sunday, Pumpkin fest and October fest. I think I’ve already written before about how much I love it and how it keeps us all rooted in the wheel of the year.
Of course, over the last two years these festivals haven’t really been a feature of our lives. You would think having a homestead that is always teeming with seasonal chores would be enough to keep me focused in the moment, but I will confess, I’ve felt very unstuck in time since the start of the pandemic.
So this weekend, partly prompted by the return of a wandering friend who has been ‘stranded’ in Hawaii for the last two years, we decided to dive deep into all things autumn. We picked both pumpkins and apples, peeping at leaves as we went. We then gathered at our place and, courtesy of my father-in-law and his gorgeous antique press, converted three bushel of said apples into fresh cider. Despite it being so late in October it was the first day that has really felt like Maine fall. The air was the perfect amount of cold that actually makes the fire a necessity to warm up by. The sun was glorious shinning on the lake and there was just enough wind to make the leaves dance all around us. We played music and sang songs, we consumed apples in a variety of liquid and solid forms, and we rounded out the day by carving jack-o-lanterns.
I’m so here for it. I’m feeling rooted and oriented to the season in a way that I’ve definitely been missing.
I’m also realizing I have less than a month to wrap this place up for winter and get all my Christmas shopping done so that I can pleasantly steep in eggnog and balsam until the New Year. I better get cracking.