Elliott - Seasons at the farm: year-round celebrations at the Elliott homestead

Shaye Elliott is the founder of the blog The Elliott Homestead , which she began in 2010 when her farm was but a dream. She and her husband, Stuart, are now developing their own little farm in the Pacific Northwest with their quiver of children, Georgia, Owen, William, and Juliette. Shaye spends her days writing, gardening, child and chicken wrangling, cow milking, pig wrestling, wine sipping, and dreaming. She is the author of From Scratch , Family Table , and Welcome to the Farm . She lives in Malaga, Washington.

ALSO BY SHAYE ELLIOTT:

Family Table Welcome to the Farm From Scratch

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Copyright 2018 Shaye Elliott
All photographs by Shaye Elliott

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Elliott, Shaye, author.

Title: Seasons at the farm : year-round celebrations at the Elliott homestead / Shaye Elliott ; foreword by Stuart Elliott.

Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Lyons Press, [2018] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018009935 (print) | LCCN 2018012311 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493034727 (e-book) | ISBN 9781493034710 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: AgriculturePopular works. | Country lifePopular works. | Cooking Popular works. | Interior decorationPopular works. | HandicraftPopular works.

Classification: LCC S501.2 (ebook) | LCC S501.2 .E44 2018 (print) | DDC 630dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009935

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For my husband, who has created a beautiful canvas for me to paint. Thank you for your endless willingness to serve, even if that means moving furniture again , and for giving me the most wonderful reason to cultivate a beautiful home: love.

by Stuart Elliott

It is good every so often (maybe more) to step back from the details of everyday life and attempt to get a big-picture view of things. As our eyes adjust to this high-altitude view, what comes into focus is a pattern. Like staring at a Magic Eye picture, the image that lies behind the pattern comes into focus. What is most evident from this vantage point is the cyclical nature of things. Like a wheel spinning in motion, life seems to revolve around something fixed, a permanent center, a hubcap if you will. This image-through-the-pattern seems to be a kind of force (not in a Star Wars kind of way) or a governing principle. Lets call it a Law of Life. As the wheel spins to make a complete revolution, what is also evident is that things arent the same as before. There is both permanence (the wheel circles back to its original position) and change (things have happened in the time it took to spin). So, the wheel is not spinning in a vacuum; it has traction on the ground and each turn advances it down a path. Somewhere in all this constant motion our lives play out.

These are by no means novel or original observations. You have probably thought of them yourself and most likely in a way that makes more sense than I have. We hear something of this sentiment in the old adage people say when some event is about to happen: History is doomed to repeat itself. The Byrds sang about it in the 1960s with the song Turn, Turn, Turn. So did Journey in the 1970s with Wheel in the Sky, though less poetically.

The Byrds lyrics are adapted from an ancient Hebrew poem found in the book of Ecclesiastes. Unlike the sentiment we get from the Byrds song, Qoheleth, the author of the poem, seems to be a little stressed about the Law of Life. Hes been running around trying to figure out meaning and purpose, and all the while the Law of Life does what it does with or without him. For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven, he observes. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been, he observes further. Qoheleth has come face to face with the Law of Life and it makes him cry out, in a kind of despair, a refrain he repeats throughout his writing: There is nothing new under the sun and all of life is vanity, a chasing after the wind.

From our big-picture vantage point, if we were to observe the rate that has come to characterize life in our culture, I think we would see a frenetic pace that does not quite sync with the timing of the Law of Life. I think our growing restlessness as a culture and the quickened pace of our consumerist lives demonstrate, probably deep down in our hearts like Qoheleth, a battle with time.

The manner in which we sync our lives with the natural cycles of the Law of Life creates a kind of rhythm. And if you are at all like me, there are moments of stillness where the painful beauty of this law will impress itself upon you; you can almost hear the music playing behind it all, sometimes cacophonous, discordant, and dissonant, other times melodic, harmonic, and beautiful. Its beauty is like watching the bud of a rose develop and grow through its various stages to the climax of its elegant bloom. Its pain lies in knowing that, like the flower, it is not permanent, though we deeply desire it to be. I consider my own children growing and changing before my eyes. It brings me simultaneously great joy but also an almost inarticulate sorrow. I am inevitably drawn back in to consider the cyclical nature of the Law of Life. I once was where they are, though not precisely. They will be where I am, and the rhythm of this stretches back generations and will continue generations more.

The Law of Life, once perceived, is evident everywhere. But, for the homesteader and those more bound to the land, the rhythm of the law is most felt in step with the natural cycles of permanence and change found in the seasons. There is an anticipation that builds with the expectation of springs new life. Summer, with its pounding heat, lays waiting just around the corner. The crisp autumn air coursing through your lungs as you soak in the deeply changing colors will surely follow. The visit of the White Wizard and his dancing snow faeries enraptures us in suspense. These all create an almost uncontrollable excitement in my soul.