EIGHT FOLD YEAR

The purpose of celebrating the eight seasonal festivals is to create a pattern or rhythm in our year that allows for a few hours’ pause every six weeks or so in our busy and often stressful routine, so that we can open to the magic of being alive on this earth at this special time. It gives us a chance to fully enter the moment, to connect with the life of the earth and the land around us, and to feel the influence of the season in our bodies, hearts and minds. If we celebrate on our own, it is a time when we can enter into meditation, perhaps reviewing our life since the last festival, thinking forward to the next one, then returning to open ourselves fully to the Here and Now – soaking in the energies of earth and sky, and the trees and plants around us, and radiating our love and blessings to the Earth and all beings.

Adapted from What Do Druids Believe? by Philip Carr-Gomm, Granta, 2006

NEARLY THERE WITH THE PREPARATION!

Not long to go now before we are living in our Sacred Circle of Ash and Oak!!!

what will rougly be the view from the Yurt door!

LEVELLING SITE

16ft circle spray painted

Site cleared and levelled. Sand base laid - just got to keep those bunnies from digging it up now! I may have to undo all Willow's bunny-friendly training soon as the numbers have really increased and im loosing alot of our veggies this year to to the fluffy critters.

The Sand- dance!

Rang through the final details of or yurt requirements to Tim, door type and stove etc. Went for double oak dooks and wooden latch . Undecided on whether to have a window or not, traditionally Yurts dont have windows, but it may be nice to have one over the kitchen area .Tim usually makes round ones, which i dont fancy , but he could make us a rectangular one instead.
Hope to collect our Yurt when we go to Glastonbury for the Summers Solstice and Chris's birthday next month!

CLEARING AND MARKING SITE

further ground clearing and post marking of the 16ft yurt

veg beds finally under control again!

a local resident of the herb patch !

CLEARING OF SITE CONT..MARCH 07

The clearing continued until we were in a position to mark out the space for a 14ft Yurt (A family sized yurt). It soon became apparent that we could accomodate a slightly larger Yurt, if we could afford it!.. considering that our Lurcher , Willow whom we are sure would take up as much room as she could, and would probably require her own very large comfy bed and the fact that we could do with the extra space in front of the door to do craft work when it rains it seemed sensible to check out the possibility of an upgrade.

Luckily Tim hadn't started work yet, and was in agreeance that a 16ft would make a real difference. Two foot difference in the round is quite a lot of floor space.

The cost wasnt much more , and the crown ( or roof wheel from which you can gaze into the sky through) increases in size with a 16fter from 40 inches to 50 inches in diameter. so we upgraded!!

For my Birthday, Chrissy brought me a boxwood stove, which should keep us nice and toasty through the winter months .It has two cooking plates , so we wont go hungry.

CLEARING SITE FEB 2007

The site required a fair bit of clearing, but as i had already cleared the area for a veg plot there wasnt too much to do.. the Brambles needed a little taming, and it was unfortunately necessary to sacrifice a herb and veg bed or two. And transplant the herbs into new homes.

Having been ill most of the winter i hadnt been able to do much on the plot so, the remaining veg beds needed a bit of work getting them back under control.

clearing

Living in the Round

Our earth is round, not square, and multitudinous forms that surround us in the natural world are round in structure. So why do so many of us choose to live most of our lives in cube-shaped houses and apartments? How can we bring the sacred circle consciousness into our daily lives?

Indigenous nomadic peoples, from the freezing Asian steppes to the windswept plains and deserts of the Americas have, since the dawn of prehistory, held sacred the belief of living or worshiping within the sacred circle. Whether it was a tipi, kiva, igloo, yurt, or wickiup, or hogan, the idea of a symbolic circle was basic to their concept of a balanced existence.

A circle represents both movement and completion to nomadic people, just as the seasons of the year are part of the circle, or cycle we call a "year." Nomadic hunter/gatherer peoples had objectives in their journeys- following game and the ripening foods as they matured and were ready to harvest. Their wanderings were not linear with some abstract goal that was never reached, but harmonized with the cyclic pattern of the seasons.