rip those loaves!

August is the beginning of autumn to me, usually more in hint and spirit than in actual weather. Nothing is shouting FALL! into your ear, instead you notice it like whispers vibrating off the squash vines like a string on a child’s tin can telephone. Walk outside for morning chores and take in the heat, but even the novice to country living and feel the change. There’s less humidity, the first leaves are starting to fade and hang differently. The garden and the forest itself are heavy with the peak of its growth, like a bowl of milk about to tip over and spoil. Senescence is just around the corner and the break-neck pace of growth seems to only apply to weeds, which by this point I have allowed to devour parts of the garden without fuss.

They used to call the first few days of August Lammas, which translates from the old Anglo-Saxon into “Loaf Mass”. Since the summer wheat was harvested before other fall crops, it was the official start of fall to people in European agricultural societies. Which is understandable on many levels, since people are not only bringing in the first big crop, but are bringing in a crop that will be ground, stored, and set aside in casks and sacks to feed their community through the dark months ahead. This made the wheat harvest the first of several insurance policies for winter, and when you are out there cutting sheaves and grinding flour for winter bread I assume its pretty hard to feel like you’re still on summer vacation....

It was a day of work, but also a holy day. People brought loaves made of the first grains of the year into their churches to be blessed and then that sacred Lammas bread was not eaten, but ripped into four equal-sized pieces and placed in the four corners of their barns. There it sat as a happy little sacrificial offering. A tangible symbol of hope for a safe winter and good luck.

And If you think I am one to buck a couple hundred years of tradition, you have another thing coming. On this Lammas full moon, I am baking bread and you better believe the four pieces will be in my barn by evening. One in each corner, which will certainly end up being eaten by for the goats, chickens, and rats but who dines tonight in the red barn, well, that's not up to me. It's up to Lammas.

Next year, I'll be harvesting wheat. Mark my words!