To Walk a Pagan Path: Practical Spirituality for Every Day (17 page)

reveals again and again how many of them have some associ-

ation with the earth’s bounty.

The simple act of growing some portion of your own

food can help integrate your Pagan spirituality into a holis-

tic lifestyle. I am not suggesting you buy a tractor and plow

up the back forty. In the first place, it is highly improbable

that you even have access to forty acres. And if you do, I

would discourage you from taking on a project of that size!

My recommendation to people who have done little garden-

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ing on their own is to start out on a very small scale. The

most common mistake new gardeners make is to put in big-

ger gardens than they can maintain. The same vegetable gar-

den that looked manageable in the early spring can become

enormous by the middle of summer. The result is often an

overgrown, weedy mess.

You do not need a lot of space to produce some healthy,

home grown food. Even if you only have the time and

resources for a tiny, postage stamp garden, you will be

reclaiming a place in the eternal cycle of giving to and receiving from the earth.

How much space is required? Only as much as you can

give, and as much as you have the time and enthusiasm to

care for. Consider what can be produced on one square yard.

In a temperate climate you can begin by planting spinach

early in the spring. Spinach does best in cool weather and can

be planted a couple of weeks before the last spring frost. If

you plant your spinach seeds four inches apart, which is plen-

ty of room for spinach, you can grow about eighty spinach

plants on that square yard plot of ground.

Harvest the spinach. It is early in the season and your

square yard plot is ready for a new crop. So plant radishes

this time. Radishes can be harvested in as little as three weeks after the seeds are planted. They can be spaced more closely than spinach, so plant your radish seeds three inches apart.

With this spacing you can grow more than 140 radishes!

Harvest the radishes. It is now probably too late in the

year for cool weather crops like lettuce or spinach, but your

square yard plot is ready for seeds again. This time plant

bush beans. Like spinach, bush bean seeds will have plenty

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of room to grow if you plant them four inches apart; giving

you up to eighty bush bean plants on your square yard. I can-

not tell you exactly how many beans you will harvest, but the

rough estimate is “a lot”.

After you have harvested your beans it will be late enough

in the year, or close to it, for planting lettuce. (Or you could plant lettuce in the spring and spinach in the autumn; the

point is that neither does very well in hot weather.) The best

varieties for a home garden are either bibb lettuce or leaf lettuce. Either can be planted about two months before the first

autumn frost is expected in your area. Lettuce seeds need to

be spaced six inches apart, but even given this generous spac-

ing you can plant about thirty five lettuce on your square

yard. Harvest this just before the first frost.

If you have been keeping track, you can see that one

square yard of earth can potentially yield eighty spinach

plants, 140 radishes, a lot of bush beans on eighty plants, and thirty five lettuce plants. In one year.

To be fair, this is a very intensive usage of that square

yard plot. And you probably do not like at least one of the

four vegetables planted in my hypothetical tiny garden. (I

loathe radishes, which is a shame because they are one of

the easiest foods to grow.) You can see, though, how produc-

ing some of your own food does not demand an excessive

amount of space.

Does this sound tedious? If you have bought or are rent-

ing a home with even a small yard, you are
already
growing things. These things are called “grass”; perennial plants that

we cut down every week or two throughout the growing sea-

son. We humans have, in a way, become slaves to grass. We

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feed the grass and water the grass, and carefully eliminate—

with our incessant mowing—the trees and shrubs that would

otherwise invade and compete with our grass overlords. And

what does the grass give us in return? Not much.

It would take a lot of work to replace your entire lawn

with a productive garden, and you probably would not be

allowed to do so anyway. Cities and towns now usually have

ordinances that require you to devote most of your front

yard to a field of close cut grass. (Yes, it seems that the grass overlords have even taken control of our government!) Even

without these ordinances you probably would not want to do

anything that drastic, nor would I encourage you to. Remem-

ber what I said about starting small!

Also, there is no need or reason to plan a garden as a

square or rectangular plot in the middle of your back yard.

My own vegetable garden borders my patio. This year two

varieties of summer squash grow at each end of the patio

border. Corn is coming up next to the holly bushes, which

are the only purely “decorative” plants allowed. Between

the corn and one of the varieties of squash are my potatoes.

Three dozen tomato plants circle delightfully around the

scarecrow we have standing just off the southwest corner of

the patio.

Your garden can be attractive and pleasant, as well as pro-

ductive.

I also advise against planting in “rows”. This is only ben-

eficial if you are going to start up the tractor and cultivate large tracts of land. For a simple home garden, rows leave

excessive gaps between plants. Any open space in your gar-

den is space for weeds to invade and take over. Obviously you

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will need pathways allowing you to reach all of the plants,

but these should be minimal.

CHARMING THE PLOW

All too often people’s thoughts turn to gardening in the

spring, when the forsythia and violets are in bloom, and (in

North America) the first robin is seen. Experienced garden-

ers begin planning and preparing long before then, and it has

ever been so. The Anglo-Saxons gave “sol-cakes” as offerings

to the Earth Mother in early February. But preparations for

the growing season began even earlier than that. Even today,

in England, the first Monday following Twelfth Day (January

6th) is known as Plow Monday. There were once tradition-

al customs that varied from one region to another involving

ceremonies in which plows were “charmed” or blessed. A

plow was often decorated and processed through the village.

The church abolished both the blessings and processions in

the 16th century, but the tradition of the plow procession

was later revived in some areas (Simpson and Roud, page

281).

While charming the plow may seem like little more

than a quaint custom, it can have very practical consequenc-

es. Few of us today have a plow that we will hitch up to a

draft horse or a pair of oxen, but we do have gardening tools.

Every year I participate in a Charming rite, but for my own

group this is a more contemporary Charming of the Rotary

Tiller. If your garden is too small to bother with a rotary tiller, not to worry, any gardening tool can be “charmed”: hoes,

shovels, forks, trowels. The practical consequence comes

into play when you gather up these tools and really look at

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them for the first time since you put them away the previ-

ous autumn. If the shovel’s blade is bent, you will have time

to repair or replace it before you really need a shovel. If the handle on your tiller is loose, you can tighten it now. Your

gardening tools will be cleaned up and ready to use in prepa-

ration for the growing season.

A Charming ritual also honors the spirits within the par-

ticipants’ tillers and other gardening tools. Some readers may

find it strange to think of non-living things of having spir-

its, but people who work with the spirit realm very often

report interactions with these entities. The Findhorn Gar-

den was established in the 1960’s by an intentional commu-

nity in Scotland. Members of this community nurtured lush

and productive gardens with the guidance they received from

entities they referred to as “devas”. Most of these were the

spirits of living things—a spinach deva, a pear deva, a tomato

deva and so on—but the Findhorn community was also con-

tacted by a machine deva informing them that machines and

tools respond to love and care just as living things do (The

Findhorn Garden, page 162).

Contemporary Pagans, in the United States at least,

who hold Charming the Plow rituals most often do these

near the end of January or in early February near the holy

tide known variously as Candlemas, Imbolc, Ewemeolc and

by other names. If you are developing Hal Sidu—evolv-

ing your own holistic traditions—the time to bless your

gardening tools should be appropriate to your local envi-

ronment. Plow Monday falls in January because England,

warmed by the Gulf Stream, has a relatively mild climate.

The soil can be tilled there earlier than in many temper-

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ate regions. Your own charming ritual should take place

about a month or so before you intend to begin gardening.

When I lived in Missouri, my ritual of Charming the Rotary

Tiller took place in early February because I began preparing

my garden in March, and then would begin planting in April.

Then I moved to western Pennsylvania. Although the sum-

mers and winters are both milder than the severe seasons

experienced in the heartland, Pennsylvania has a significant-

ly shorter growing season. After putting in my first garden

I watched my tomato plants as they suffered under three

heavy snowfalls. (Amazingly, some of the plants survived.) I

knew the seasons and cycles of the earth in Missouri, but I

was ignorant of Pennsylvania’s natural cycles. My spiritual

traditions were not aligned with the forces around me.

Now, knowing that Pennsylvania can have snow as late

as May, I hold my Charming ritual at or near the spring equi-

nox. I could still do it in early February, but the ritual would lose much of its significance. Your own ritual should likewise

be held a month or so before you will begin working with

the earth. Charming the Plow prepares us mentally for the

coming year even as we organize our gardening implements.

For your Charming the Plow ritual all you will need is a

pleasing essential oil and, naturally, whatever gardening tools you intend to bless. This can be included as part of another

ritual if that works for you. The first thing you need to do,

before the ritual begins, is cleanse each gardening tool. Literally. Wash off any dirt and, while doing this, see if any part of the implement has broken or become loose. You may want

to decorate the tool with a bit of ribbon. After this, small

trowels and similar implements can be placed on the altar,

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while shovels, hoes and (if you use one) a rotary tiller can be placed near the altar and to one side.

When you are ready for the charming, anoint each gar-

dening implement with your essential oil as you address it,

saying:

Hail to you, and to the spirit within you!

May you greet the Earth, Mother of All Life,

Let her be full of growth and abundant with nourishment.

Finish with a final expression of affirmation. As a Saxon

Pagan, I would say, “Ic bidde thé nu” (eech bidda they noo),

which means “I ask you now” in Old English. Your own affir-

mation should be appropriate expression of your spirituality.

Wiccans, for example, might say “So Mote It Be”.

Having blessed or charmed your gardening tools, keep

them in a clean, dry place until you are ready to prepare your

garden.

BIDDING THE LAND

Here we are using the word “bid” in the sense of praying

or entreating, a meaning that comes from the Old English

verb
biddan
. If you are planting a garden to help integrate your spirituality with your daily activities, your first step is to entreat the land itself and develop a positive relationship with the spirit beings that reside in that vicinity. This is important even if you are taking over someone else’s vegetable garden,

or converting a former flower garden. The land is not just a

thing; it has a life of its own.

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You will need either cornmeal or oatmeal (real oatmeal,

not the processed instant stuff ); enough to scoop up five

handfuls. You will also need a spade or shovel. Decide where

and how large your garden will be. If this is your first garden, I recommend that you limit the size to no more than 100

square feet. This can be a ten foot square, a five foot by twen-ty foot rectangle, or any other shape you can imagine. Of