The Honourable Harvest

Here we are, at the end of July, at the first of the old Celtic harvest festivals: Lughnasadh.

Up here in Northumberland, on the gorsey, piney uplands nature’s party poppers are going off in abundance as myriad seedpods release their pre-sprouting babies into the world. It’s a party! From sharp wild sorrel and the first of the field mushrooms to the prolific wild raspberries giving way to the first luscious blackberries, Earth is generously giving away countless seasonal treats.

Harvest season is a great time to be thinking about how we humans share the abundant generosity of our home planet with the beautiful life that surrounds us in plant, animal and fungus form - or, as we 21st century dwellers of industrialised places tend to consider them, 'natural capital', ‘resources’ and ‘commodities’. There’s not a lot of sharing going on as fortunes are spent annually on preventing other-than-human mouths from taking a wee nibble at our Tesco-ready veggies.

But even here, until relatively recently the harvest was considered to be a time of wider giving and receiving, of gratitude and reciprocity - of actual sharing.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, the Nation Potawatomi American author of the completely wonderful book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, writes of the principle of the Honourable Harvest, summarised in her short article in Yes! Magazine. She writes:

The Honorable Harvest, a practice both ancient and urgent, applies to every exchange between people and the Earth. Its protocol is not written down, but if it were, it would look something like this:

Ask permission of the ones whose lives you seek. Abide by the answer.

Never take the first. Never take the last.

Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. 

Take only what you need and leave some for others.

Use everything that you take. 

Take only that which is given to you. 

Share it, as the Earth has shared with you. 

Be grateful. 

Reciprocate the gift.

Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever.

Imagine how different our lives would be - the world would be - if we lived like that - with an attitude of true thankfulness and kindness to the Earth that sustains us with such gifts and such pleasure!

The Honourable Harvest as daily nature connection

In fact, observing the principles of the Honourable Harvest ourselves is a really practical and properly interactive kind of nature connection, open to and effective for us all. We can very quickly see abundant rewards for us and our Earth-dwelling companions of all species when we do it - however we come by our harvest goodies: whether from our gardens and allotments, the hedgerows, or the supermarket. Every little would help!

Perhaps, beginning this harvest season, we could try something like this:

Ask permission of the ones whose lives you seek. Abide by the answer. Whatever our beliefs, mindful picking is really meditative and produces a zen centredness in no time. I find I get a gut feeling about whether I should pick something or not. The more tuned to nature and to our authentic selves we become, the more we recognise our intuition at work when some impulse holds us back. We might not know the reason - sometimes we don’t need to.

Never take the first. Never take the last. Someone else - of any species - will be hungrier than us and their life may depend on it if they’ve been foraging unsuccessfully for a while. Or we can leave it knowing that doing so leaves a precious treat for a smaller creature (or two or more). We lucky humans can wait a little to take from it when it’s in full season. It’s an act of generosity to do this in our gardens and allotments too.

Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. There are many applications for this, but we can also thoughtfully consider where and how often we get our milk, cheese, meat, eggs and the price of the lives involved since our intensive harvesting extends to the animal world too.

Take only what you need and leave some for others - so we don’t rob others of their dinner!

Use everything that you take: as above - it might not look like much to us, but someone else definitely wants what we don’t - dried as hay, bolted as flowers and seeds for the pollinators and birds, and all the leftovers for the slugs, fungi and minibeasts to fulfil their roles by clearing up afterwards. It’s a miraculous, self-sustaining system, given the chance.

Take only that which is given to you: if someone else is on there when we want to pick it, it’s kind to accept that they have first rights and take it as a sign that we should considerately move on and

choose another.

Share it, as the Earth has shared with you. When we’re growing our own food we could consider reserving an area for creatures to enjoy treats that they don’t get such ready access to - especially berries, untrimmed hedges and boltings.

Be grateful. We receive through pleasure, through community, through keeping body and soul together. Whatever we believe, we enjoy Earth’s generosity every day and gratitude does us good.

Reciprocate the gift. For every gift received, a thank-you creates balance and beds in an interactive mutuality of giving and receiving. Get creative! Perhaps consciously give a wild area, even only a tiny one, protecting it and letting it flourish whatever comes with patience and without judgement. The process never fails to amaze me. How every bare patch left to itself starts with weeds, and then Earth takes it from there - real magic happens as the ‘pests’ move in and the ‘other than pests’ follow and so very quickly there’s a whole ecosystem that looks after itself!

Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever. By observing the principles of the Honourable Harvest, we can all live life-enhancing, joyful sustainability and everyday nature connection.

Let’s give those popping seedpods something to celebrate!

Happy Harvest!