Harvest Moon

The Harvest Moon was a special event this year. It is the first time since 1991 that the full moon and the autumn equinox have come together. On Thursday evening these two events coincided in the small hours of the morning. We spent Wednesday and Thursday evening looking at a spectacular full moon in clear sky accompanied by Jupiter and its moons. Through a scope or binoculars Jupiter's moons (4 that we could see) formed a prismatic ring around it. It is times like this when you wish for two things: to have a really top notch telescope and to have answers to questions such as "just how big is the cosmos and how many other planets have life forms?" Oh and "Just how long a lens do I need for the camera"?

Anyway, Back down to earth. We thought it would be good time to celebrate our harvests. Our fully stocked freezer, shelves straining with jars of pisto, and pasatta, pickles and jams, tables laden with squash, fruit, tomatoes, marrow and carrots, crates filled with potatoes, one year's supply of honey, good wine, containers full of organic flour, vegetable plots still producing copious amounts of beans, squash, beetroot, brassicas, leeks, aubergine, swede, celery, celariac, fennel, peppers, strawberries, tomatoes - we celebrate the bounty and take stock of how lucky we are to produce a lot of our own food, to have found local suppliers of good quality products and to be able to provide others with small offerings and to exchange goods with neighbours, friends and family. The harvest means so much more than food on the table.