Description

This book looks at the agricultural year as a starting space for a deepening of earth-centered spirituality. It gives a set of backstories to ease listeners into a time between the pre-industrial era and the modern one, into a place where the fast-moving stress of American life can be affected by a better connection not only to the natural world, but also to the elegant expression of the year as expressed through seasonal festivals and celebrations. 

The chapters are broken into four seasons, with the quarter days a highlight within each, and feature simple skills that accompany each marker in the year. Author H. Byron Ballard offers advice on spiritual and physical immersion into the seasons that applies to listeners from all areas: rural, urban, and suburban. 

This is also a deeply practical book, including insights into the following: 

• Farming and gardening: composting, manure, soil preparation, pests, seed-saving 
• Food: cooking, preserving, foraging, the summer kitchen, mushrooms, and mycelium 
• Fiber arts: knitting, crocheting, spinning, weaving, decorative cut-work, and embroidery 
• Sewing: treadle machines, electric machines, hand sewing 
• Household crafts: candle-making, soap-making, broom-making, sharpening tools 
• Health: medicines, tending the dying, death, and death rituals