Embody Your Medicine: On Being Enough & An Invitation to Dig Ginger, Make Fire Cider, Savor Pawpaws & Receive the Gift of Seed Garlic
with Halloween Carols for all!
“It’s not much, but perhaps it’s enough?”
she asked, pulling a single onion out of her pocket, bringing tears to my eyes even before layers were peeled. Inspired by the invitation to bring ingredients to our community fire cider making, she looked in her kitchen and found this offering: an onion she had grown last summer, the first she had ever grown from seed.
This, I thought.
This is it.
Friends, we don’t expect gardens to grow lush overight. We don’t expect market economy to suddenly evaporate.
But look, here: here are the seeds of another world, right here in our hands.
Isn’t this the alchemy, the medicine of community, how we learn to trust our needs are gifts and everything we have to share is also a gift? We love this expressed by Olly Costello:
And Friends, Saturday, October 26th is our annual Embody Your Medicine
Community U-Dig Ginger + Fire Cider Making Celebration
on the farm where we’ll dig our own ginger and make fire cider together, also digging dahlia tubers as well as savoring pawpaws and sharing gorgeous seed garlic together (more details below!) and Friends, whoever you are and wherever you are, I hope you’ll dig deep with me, trusting
we are enough
we are the seeds
and
we are the medicine
Some days we bring one onion, other days we’ll bring a bushel. On the hardest and most vital days for us to show up, we come needing the onions brought by neighbors and strangers. Are you sure needs are gifts? We are, we are.
Together, we are remembering and reimagining, practicing the world we dream of, just like Pancho kissing my cheek:
Join us and together let’s
Embody (Y)Our Medicine:
Ginger & Dahlia Tuber U-Dig, Fire Cider Making, Pawpaw Tasting & Garlic Gifting
Saturday, October 26th from 10 to 4 pm at Fruition
At 10 am we’ll dig dahlia tubers, our entire collection of Fruition’s originals both edible and ornamental. Bring a digging fork and a box to bring tubers home in! Curious how to dig and store your own dahlias? Hop over here 💛
We’ll be digging and preparing for storage the tubers that will remain here on the farm to bloom with countless generations to come, too:
At noon, let’s dig lusciously fragrant baby ginger together! Bring your own bag to bring them home as well as digging fork, if you have one.
We’ll also be digging, cleaning and freezing ginger to share at community feasts on the farm next summer! Do we ever truly reap what we alone have sowed?
Here’s a bit of the ginger we harvested for the recent The People’s Harvest fire cider making in Rochester and thanks again to everyone who made that such a vivid expression of abundance, joy and community care:
At 1 pm we'll make our own Fire Cider together from ingredients on the farm and brought by you, our beloved community.
From the farm, we’ll be sharing garlic, ginger, horseradish, shallots and hot peppers…
…and bring a jar, knife and cutting board as well as any of those ingredients above you may have to share as well as raw apple cider vinegar, onions, rosehips, thyme, oregano and honey.
We suspect the greatest need will be for raw apple cider vinegar, so if you’re wondering what to bring, thanks for bringing as much as feels fabulous, the more the merrier!
We’ll also have several gallon jars for us all to chop ingredients to fill, making fire cider for our local community apothecary to share in the coming season.
Enjoy our blog sharing fire cider ingredients, process & inspiration for our Friends near and far:
At 2 pm we'll savor pawpaws together, giving thanks for many gifts, including our friend Brice who planted these trees nearly 20 years ago so we might all gather and be nourished together today and for generations to come:
At 2:30 pm we'll share seed gorgeous garlic, shallots and garlic fertilizer with you, Friends! Here is some of the Italy Hill Giant Ivory we’d love to gift you:
And this is where we dig deep together:
For many of us, it’s sincerely challenging to receive anything, much less such abundance, without directly and immediately reciprocating, especially with dollars.
We are well conditioned to define our worth and dignity, Friends. Like so many people, it is easier for Matthew and I to give rather than receive, so thank you for experiencing this deep joy and courageous challenge alongside us!
As we practice giving and receiving beyond ledgers and lifetimes, trusting our belonging beyond market economy, here’s an invitation:
How to say thank you:
~ Take the deepest breath you’ve taken all day and trust that simply reading these words is thank you enough
~ Whoever you are, wherever you are: what are your gifts and who in your community needs them? Sharing your gifts in these ways is a marvelous way to amplify the gifts we endeavor to share, near and far
~ If you’d love to thank us more directly, we humbly share our relational, material and financial needs from our Growing Gratitude Beyond Market Economy blog for you to feel into:
~ Relational needs: Explore our upcoming events & join us here on the farm! We honor and hunger for connection and community in our lives, so trust your presence is a profound gift in our lives at our many celebrations and invitations to come. Want to collaborate? Share more here!
~ Material needs: we always welcome mason jars of any size, preserved magic from your garden and would love to receive a hand-knit hat for winter as well as a garden cart, if any of these flavors sing for you. If you’ve something else you’d love to share, don’t be shy!
~ Financial needs: Fruition is officially a non-profit 501(c)3 organization! And if you have financial fluidity in your life, we welcome you to take a peek at our budget and make it possible for us (all!) to continue sharing so much with us all. Thank you for gifting your presence, care and capacity here 💛
Another Invitation
As Fruition transforms in new ways, we’d love to invite you to share a blessing for this new era together!
A few words, a quote, a drawing, a vision, a sentence or seven, a poem: What hopes do you have for seeds, for Fruition, for our world moving forward?
Local kin joining us this weekend will have an opportunity to write their blessing personally (bring a marker!) in a *very* fun way (such a mysterious cliffhanger, it’s true!) and if you’re only able to join us in spirit, thank you for replying to this email with your blessing. I’ll be honored to write your words myself in this very special way…
…and by spring you’ll hear all about how your blessings are being woven around us, into the land and around us all 💛
Sending love from our falling leaves to yours!
And Friends, if you'd love to collaborate or otherwise host our Merry Seed Gifting Practice this winter, hop into our All Flourishing is Mutual Questionnaire and thanks to the hundreds of folx who already have. You may not hear from us ‘til the New Year, but trust our long winter's nap will surround us all with such generosity and possibility:
we are the seeds!
Sow Seeds & Sing Songs,
and the Many Becomings of Fruition
ps
If you’ve been forwarded this email and would love to subscribe, welcome! We share stories from the farm each Friday and would love see you here one day:
pps
What songs of silliness and reverence do you sing in this season?
Here are some Halloween Carols to weave into the depth, light and darkness of these liminal October moments:
sending love from
Fruition Seeds
7921 Hickory Bottom Road in Naples, New York 14512
We humbly acknowledge we occupy the ancestral and treaty lands of the Haudenosaunee Onondawagah People. This land has shown us the gift of community, connection and reverence. May we continue to seek guidance from the elders and landkeepers, humxn and beyond, who have been nurturing the vivid resilience of this region for countless generations.
🫶🏼🌱