This Sunday, J. and I started the first harvest on my land in the country. I am sure there were harvests on the land before my family purchased it, both in the deep history of the eastern agricultural complex and in the shorter history of colonization.

Yet, in the 40 years or so we’ve owned it, we’ve never done one. I’m sure we’ve pulled tomatoes in from the garden or picked herbs to flavor the salmon. We have planted things on the land and reaped their benefits—butterfly bushes, pine and dogwood, irises and other bulbs. Yet, that benefit has mostly the joy of seeing a hummingbird dancing around a flower, or my grandmother’s best friend painting our garden full of flowers. The benefit has mostly been beauty, which is no small thing at all.

A harvest is beautiful, but it is beautiful in a different way than that. For me, it is distinct in meaning from “eating from the garden” or foraging for small amounts of medicinal herbs. It is a word that carries with it the implication of community, of work too large for a single person and yields measured in more than a few meals, and the long history of tending the land.

When I say this is our first harvest, I mean it is the first time I have gathered from that land at scale, and it is the first time I have gathered from that land with the intent that it enrich my larger community. We picked for others not just for ourselves.

Planning the Harvest

When I went out to the house at the end of June, the week before the forth of July, I walked through my grandmother’s garden. She has been dead for more than 10 years but she was the last one to plant in that soil. In the years since her passing we have let it go to seed.

I feel my grief for her deepest in her garden and so I have spent little time in it. And with so little attention it had filled with plants from edge to edge, growing out and over what had once been cobble stones, so it wasn’t exactly easy to pass through.

But this time I walked through with an eye to understand what had been growing there. It turns out that it was less a garden and more a field of common Mugwort—artemisia vulgaris.

I caught the plants about a month before they would be at peak harvest condition. So I planned for picking at the end of July or early august. I cant go out there all the time to monitor them right now, so I knew I would be guessing at peak harvest time rather than hitting it dead on but I hoped for the best.

The plan was to clear everything that was on the cobbles in the morning then spend the afternoon bunching and hanging the mugwort. Then we could swim together afterwards. I talked to several friends about it, but in the end it was just me and J. who went out.

Starting Out

I wanted to do this right so once we arrived we spent some time settling in and getting our things out to the back porch. We took pictures pre harvest, one for ourselves and one of the garden.

Then we offered tobacco to the land. As I have been taught you must offer something back for what you take. Tobacco as a first and best option, then if not a song, and if not that then your spit and your hair—two things that are part of you for only a short time in the same way the leaves and flowers you take are with the plant for only a short time.

We then walked counterclockwise around the house stopping at each point to call on the land and its inhabitants to aid us and offer more tobacco. We talked about our intentions for growing our partnership for the land and for making the house a place of shelter and healing.

I was taught in the Shoshone and Lakota ways where you move sunwise, or clockwise, through the directions. Though, of course, they differ in where to start. This time I chose counterclockwise because the garden is on the eastern side of the house, and the tree planted for my grandmother and the chair where a protective spirit sit are at the southern side. I wanted to invite them last, so counterclockwise we went.

July has been a slow and hard month for both J. and I. We’ve been productive, and dealt with our own fair share of minor crises, but it hasn’t really felt that productive, and it certainly has felt long and mind numbing. We came in feeling a little run down and vulnerable. The spirits we called were those who are protectors, and perhaps not those traditional to the harvest—the venomous spider, box turtle, and catfish being notables.

Penultimately, we called to our mothers in the spirit world, and our grandmothers, and sisters. For we were meditating on the way women tend land. And ultimately to the named and human spirits of the land—Grammie Lois, Papa John, Grandpa Boyd, Grandma Vera, Waterprotector and his kin.

The Harvest Itself

We put a speaker in the middle of garden and got to work.

Immediately there were problems to solve. The old compost piles were just that—old. So old they are as dense and full of roots as any soil in the forest. So I took a few minutes to define a new compost pile with logs. We were going to have a significant amount of non mugwort plants pulled for the mere reason of needing to clear a path and I wanted to make sure those were given back to the land.

It also became clear that we had not planned at all for how dense the foliage was in the garden. It looked merely overgrown, but for every square foot cleared we were pulling 30 or 40 stalks.

My estimate of 20-30 pounds would end up being about right for how much we were able to pull from the land in one day with just two people—but high for what was quality enough to dry and low for how much there was.

As we picked we talked about frameworks, about healing ourselves, and the choices we make in telling the stories of our lives. We talked about how little we care for firm identities and find more freedom in the play of language. We talked about our continually lowering thresholds for bullshit. We were vulnerable with each other. We owned our fear and disgust. We asked each other hard queshtions.

It is important to pick plants with intent and with knowledge of the medicine they bring. Mugwort sends away bad spirits, and it builds the powers of perception and clarity European magicians might call psychic powers but which I know much more flexible as Medicine. So to talk as we did of the construction of our very consciousness seemed perfectly fitting. As did talking about what bullshit we wanted to cast away from ourselves.

The amount of life we found in the garden as we pulled was staggering. I’ve never seen so many different species of spider in my life. And we found huge praying mantises hidden in the grass. Hummingbirds and butterflies danced above us all day. I explained to them that I knew I was destroying some of their homes and I was sorry, but I was in the process of building a home for all peoples even them and this was part of it.

The more we cleared the more energy seemed to flow through the garden, and the more spirits showed up to visit us, so I like to think they dont mind.

Wrapping Up the Picking

By halfway through the day our plan to process the mugwort there was thrown out the window, and instead we laid it all on a tarp and then uses twine to wrap it up like a sack and drive it the hour home to my house in the city. The picking had to be done there, but the processing didn’t. So that’s where we focused.

We worked for about 4 ½ hours and there was probably 5 hours of stuff left to pull, if you count the stands on other pats of the land I wish to pull in the name of native plants. But we were tired and we still had to get home and J. still had to provide dinner for him and his partner P.

So when it was clear we were flagging, I set an arbitrary number of songs off my playlist and said we were going to work at high intensity until they were done, then give ourselves a moment to pick anything that stood out as needing to go. Then we would be done.

We finished the day by jumping in the pond and swimming our sweat away. Like every dunk after a long hot day of hard labor it was life changing. We came out feeling like new men. I dream of the time in my life where every time I am overstimulated or shaking off the deep focus of work I can swim in its embrace.

We entered the day scattered and disconnected, lost in the numbness of summer, and left feeling at peace, tired but satisfied.

Other gifts

The land also bestowed on me other gifts.

We were also able to harvest a significant amount of iris leaf from several different cultivars. I currently have the homework of weaving a basket as a meditation on what it means to support a community and to prepare to sit in council.

I had been planning on a pine needle basket but its still early in the season for large quantities to fall and the pines that give them are not common here. But iris leaf and the strong palm like leaves of other bulbed plants can be used. They were at the perfect stage of growth and decay to take for drying.

I also returned home with a near perfect turkey feather, a honorable gift from the land. It felt right to recieve it after the harvest.

Turkey teaches many things—he is a good brother to have. He teaches willingness, a willingness to learn and a a willingness to follow where-ever service and care might lead. He teaches the spirit of give-away, to give things of use and import to others so that one may grow. He teaches service in its most grounded form. And he teaches, oh does he teach, the power of the land to heal. He is after all earth-eagle.

More tomorrow,

Weaver