Charming of the Plow

This past Saturday, my children and I gathered in the garden to perform an old Anglo-Saxon ritual - the Æcerbot, first recorded in the 11th century.  As recorded, it is rather Pagan with a thin Christian veneer; but it has become a seasonal celebration for us because of a passing mention by the Venerable Bede in De Temporum Ratione in 725.  In the passage, he describes the month Solmōnaþ, roughly equivalent with our February and beginning and ending on the new moon.  He translates the name as "cake-month", because he says that the English would offer them to their Gods in that month.  Fast-forward to the Æcerbot a few centuries later, and we see that the ritual calls for digging a furrow in the garden to be planted, and offering cakes to Mother Earth.  And so, we celebrate this holiday - called the Charming of the Plow because it is a common Heathen name for holidays at this time of year, and because the original Æcerbot ritual does just that.  I like to position the holiday and corresponding ritual near the full moon of February; it seems like the best way to condense what may have been a month-long practice into one holiday.  Here is my re-Paganised (and slightly simplified for modern life) version of the ritual:

After sunset on the night of the full moon, go out and dig four small holes in the four corners of the garden, saving the soil.  Mix together oil, honey, and yeast.  If you have any perennial herbs or plants, use twigs from those to drip the mixture onto the soul three times; otherwise, use twigs gathered from nearby trees, saying this each of the three times:

"Grow mightily and fill this earth with fruits; Nerthus bless this soil with your great power."

After that, leave the soil out in a sacred place overnight - perhaps at the foot of a mighty tree or a nearby creek.

The next day, write or inscribe the rune Berkana onto each of the four twigs reserved for this purpose.  Place one into the bottom of each hole, putting the soil back into place, and saying "Grow" nine times over each hole.

In the center of the garden, stretch your arms to the sky and turn clockwise three times, keeping your face lifted to the sky.  Say:

"This soil is filled with plenty.  May its fruitfulness nourish the bodies of me and mine, and may my efforts give honor to the spirits of this place, the land wights, and the Earth, mother of all."

Take some seeds that you are planning to use in that land, and place them in a bowl on the soil before you.  Then say (feel free to substitute some of your own plants for those listed):

"Erce, Erce, Erce, earth's mother,

May Nerthus grant you
fields growing and flourishing,
propagating and strengthening,
tall shafts, bright crops,
and red tomato crops,
and soft sage crops,
and all earth's crops.
May Nerthus grant you
that your produce be guarded against any enemies,
and that it be kept safe from harm,
from poisons sown around the land.
Now I bid the Mother, who shaped this world,
that none shall overturn the words thus spoken."

Dig up a small portion of the land - or more, if you are planning to plant that day - and say:

"Whole may you be Earth, mother of men!
May you be ever-growing and ever-fruitful,
with food filled for the needs of me and mine."

Placing the cake in the soil, just as you would normally plant seeds, say:

"Field full of food for me and mine,
bright-blooming, you are blessed
in the holy name of the one who gives all fruitfulness,
the Earth on which we live;
Nerthus, the one who made the ground,
grant us the gift of growing,
that for us each fruit and leaf might come to use.

Then say three times: "Grow, in the name of Nerthus, be blessed."

Supplies:

Spade or shovel
bucket or container for soil
oil
honey
yeast
twigs from perennial herbs or trees on property
four twigs or small branches to use as rune staves
a few early seeds or bulbs for planting, or seeds for later planting if seasonally appropriate
cakes - these can be either like pancakes or cookies, but flavored with honey rather than sugar

Here's a possible recipe for the cakes, based on a recipe from New Varangian Guard, a re-enactment society in Australia:

Honey Shortbread

1 cup flour

1/4 cup corn starch

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup honey

Mix the ingredients and form a dough, spoon into a well-greased pan.

Bake at 325 for 30 minutes, let cool and cut into pieces.

B is for Baking Bread

Photograph by Amber Doty

Ah, the smell of fresh-baked bread.  Is there any other smell so representative of a well-kept home, a cared-for family?  For me, the baking of bread is a transformative, magical process - one I hardly understand but am constantly amazed by.

I grew up in a busy family, where no one had time to make fancy dinners or wait for bread to rise.  Dinner usually came from the microwave, traditionally frozen peas or corn paired with chicken nuggets.  Every once in a while we got corned beef and cabbage from the crockpot, and it was always a treat!  Bread came in a little bag from the overstock store, usually a day or two from expiring, always in the exact same shape.

I grew up around farm people and talk, but was raised in the town, where there were no cows or sheep or connection to the things I ate.  I walked the corn rows de-tasseling for a few summers in my youth, amazed at the huge fields that stretched on for what seemed like forever, but we never took the corn home to eat - this was feed corn, meant for the cattle I never spent much time with.  I grew up completely unaware of how to cook anything, and totally oblivious to the magic that so much of our food undergoes before it becomes the food we recognize.

So this was the person my husband moved in with a few days before our first daughter was to be born - my husband whose mother makes her own yoghurt, cooks her own roti, who I once watched slaughter and cook a rabbit in her garage.  Needless to say, he was disappointed, and I was terribly confused.  In the wake of this stunning clash of worlds, he and I both worked a lot on our cooking skills, and we've come a long way since.  But where I came from and what I grew up with makes me intensely appreciative of the magic that happens in the kitchen.

Simple bread made from five ingredients, changes from a fluffy powder (which ultimately comes from the wheat plant) into a malleable dough, into a wonderful loaf that's often twice the size of the dough itself.  Using yeast, a living organism, to transform this simple-yet-so-complex food from its origins into something completely unrecognizable is truly a magical act.  As a mother of three, I've also made some concessions to busyness - these days, most of my bread comes from the bread machine.  But it is still homemade, far healthier than bread bought at the store, and my children are growing up with the kitchen magic that my ancestors discovered ages ago.

My current favorite recipe comes from my Cuisinart bread machine's instruction booklet, modified somewhat by what I've found to work best for me.  It isn't really an everyday bread for us, but coupled with some pasta or marinara sauce, it's wonderful.

Rosemary Bread for a Bread Machine

1 1/2 lb Loaf

Place wet ingredients in bread pan first, followed by dry ingredients.

1 cup water

3 tbs olive oil

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1 1/2 tsp white sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp dried rosemary

1/4 tsp Italian seasoning

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast