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Saturday, February 8, 2025

Green Wizardries: Imbolc

Imbolc is the festival of the first stirrings of Spring and it falls on Saturday the first of February.  This is a national holiday in Ireland which was appropriate as Ireland was very dependant on her sheep for meat and wool.  Now, sadly, the Irish have few wool mills that mill real sheep’s wool.  It is easier for them to mill acrylic yarn which is practically useless at keeping anyone warm. How the mighty have fallen…  I believe it is sometimes less expensive to buy New Zealand lamb in Ireland than local.  

The name Imbolc means ewe’s milk as lambs used to be born in the fields in Ireland around the beginning of February. Lambing was a very important event in the agricultural year.  Lambs were the very first new life to come in the spring and the people used to depend upon their sheep as they are now dependant on their work-from-home on the computer gigs.  

I expect you know the very beautiful Ukrainian Carol of the Bells.  It is a New Years carol and has some beautiful lyrics.  The carol is about a swallow who flies from afar and announces the miraculous birth of the lambs.  “Come here, oh come.  Master its time.  In the sheepfold, wonders to find.  Your lovely sheep have given birth to little lambs of great worth.”

Those lines encapsulate my feelings every time I go into the sheepfold and find beautiful little fluffy lambs toddling about where before there had only been a fat, grumpy ewe.  The way lambs hit the ground and learn to walk, explore and drink milk in moments always seems miraculous to even the most hardened farmer.  

I will let you in on a secret, farmers are careful to give an image of not being sentimental but even the toughest of them usually has a heart of mush.  I remember a shepherd telling me her animals were not pets and that she ran her flock to be an economic benefit.  I asked her why she was keeping a post-menopausal goat?    

Then there was the farmer who went out to give medicine to a sick calf in the middle of a cold spring night.  Finding the calf , who I believe was dressed in his woolen Stanfields shirt,  unwilling to let him go, he curled up around the calf to keep it warm and fell asleep out there.  

Another farmer friend kept a dry cow for five years.  A dry cow means one who will not get pregnant.  I asked him what he was thinking as feeding a cow that does not produce makes it a very expensive pet.  He told me, “I am trying to save my marriage.” His wife loved that cow.  That is what farmers are really like.  

Keeping animals is a wonderful experience and I feel very sorry for people who cannot have at least a few of their own hens.  I remember a lovely woman who came to visit our farm.  Her friend took her into the hen house and made her reach in under a large golden hen and extract  fresh warm egg.  The woman held the egg in her hand and cried.  I think it was the pent up longing for a real life that hit her. 

If you do not have lambs to look forward to this year, I hope that at least you have a garden.  Imbolc is a great day to start some seeds.  It is time to start the seeds of onions, leeks, celery, celeriac and this year, I will be starting some peppers early as the season here is really too short for peppers.  Swiss chard, basil and parsley can all be started early indoors.

A lot of flowers should also be started now.  Alyssum which is so wonderful for the bees, delphiniums to delight the eye and heart, echinacea, nicotiana which perfumes the night, rudbeckia and Blanket flowers, sweet peas of which you can never have too many, cosmos daisies and sunflowers the same.  

Imbolc is a Festival of light returning to the Earth.  The Goddess Bridget, now, also, Saint Bridget of Kildare,  arrives in the world on the beams of sunshine and spreads her green cloak across the land.   Imbolc is the right time to go out and harvest sedges to fashion Saint Bridge’s crosses which are an ancient sun symbol of protection.  Make a few of these crosses and place one by the hearth or in the kitchen if you are a poor person and have no fireplace.  I make a Bridget doll of sedges and dress her in an apron and cape.  Last year’s doll and crosses are given to the flames with our gratitude.  Each stable and hen house gets its own cross.  

As far as the feast for this holy day, it is traditionally based on dairy products and honey both of which are sacred to Bridget.  An easy way to celebrate the feast is to invite some guests to a pancake breakfast with the circular golden pancakes representing the returning sun and some butter and honey to slather on the cakes.    I wish everyone who chooses to celebrate this lovely holy day, a joyous celebration.

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