Samhain 2010

Dear Neophyte,

This post is a little late in the making but ah-well :)

This year for Samhain I went to Aarons house.  We had two roasts, cornbread, sweet potatoes, deviled eggs and banana bread.  Aaron isnt into the whole celebratory thing so we just had a feast and left it at that.

We did go up to Natches trace again.  Not leaves this time, but I did gather acorns, black walnuts and hickory nuts!  This was such a good thing for me, I felt SO connected to the land and my ancestors.

So what if we didnt dance nekked around a fire? (it threatened to rain the whole time)  I had harvested on a harvest festival.  How many others can say they did that??  One suggestion though: give each person a bag so they can each go to separate sides of the tree to forage.  Otherwise you lose your progress in hunting down who has the bag when your hands and pockets get full.

We spent an hour or two on the portch cracking them open and learned the ins and outs of harvesting the meat of wild nuts.  Such as with acorns - crack them *right* before you plan to eat them, otherwise they spoil very quickly!  I think this is why they arnt grown commercially.

I enjoyed the hickory nuts though and am letting the walnuts dry more before I crack them.  Anyway, had a ton of fun and am officially adding "nut savaging" to my yearly pre-Samhain activities!  The resulting fruit will be baked into our Samhain feast like it's suppose to.  This makes me feel so good about getting back to the roots of a harvest festival: I harvested this stuff and *that* is why it's on my table.

Next year I should see what I can do about self-harvesting more of what goes onto my table...

Here are some pictures of the nuts we gathered so other peeps know what they look like:

Hickory nuts, on the tree while green and what they look like dried.  Hickory wood is popular to cook meat over so if you got a big enough bag you could potentially gather some wood to smoke your feast over or add to the ritual fire.

Black Walnut: This is what it looks like on the ground, or this may have turned solid black and be drying out by the time you find it.  Just scrape this part off and the second picture is what is inside.  Break this open for the meat.

Acorn: Comes from the Oak tree, which is sacred to just about every sect of Pagan.  Defiantly gather some of this wood for your ritual fire or for you workings in the next year!  These are so soft they can be cracked by hand if you really wanted to.  The ones that are sprouting actually tastes better than the ones that arnt so get the sprouted ones if you can!

Blessings,
Sesh