The culture of the land

Working on our allotment has also put us back in touch with the land, allowing us to somehow link up with the natural rhythms missing from our urban existence. Observing the Moon, recognising the start of each season, knowing when to plant, when to wait and when to harvest are some of the gifts we have received over the years. And connected with this, copying life in the past, we are determined to recover legends, traditions, old wives’ tales and all the pagan festivals which venerated the Earth and her special moments, recognising her role as nutritional Mother without whom life is impossible.

We have gradually included in our close reality, festivals like that of the pumpkin in Autumn, the Spring Festival, the ghostly group of Samhain, Candlemass (which is also Imbolc, one of the four main festivals in the Celtic calendar)… linking female power (not exclusive to women) to the land, to food and to crops, which are inherent to it, and likewise how to exert the leadership of women. Feminising the governing of somewhere through self-management, self-funding, assemblies, horizontality and consensus rather than voting is never easy, the usual social structure is always in the opposite direction.

But this is precisely what has enabled us to go further. To create a cohesive human group capable of choosing its own goals and ways of doing things, confirming what we suspected from the outset: if we affect the Earth with our actions, she affects us likewise and, if we let her, she teaches us and changes us taking us to places we never thought were possible.