December... and Winter Solstice

Had such meaning in the days of old.  The winter solstice was a time to check to see if you still had supplies enough to make it through the winter, cattle were slaughtered so you wouldn’t have to feed them through the winter and now was the time to check and see if the wine and beer had fermented enough to drink! ( source: Wikipedia)
  Well I checked the root cellar and for our first year we still have a bunch of potatoes left and white onions and carrots.  Our sweet potatoes were a bust old moldy and rotten but I was surprised we got any out after the wet summer we had.

We won’t make it through the whole winter but then again we didn’t plan to.  We just put the garden in this past year and just wanted to see how well we could grow things let alone store things.  No beer or wine fermenting maybe in the future at least some hard cider but with so many great wineries around us why bother.

As the year winds to close and we look towards next spring it is a time to reflect, enjoy family and count our blessings.  Maybe a party or two maybe even a celebration of the solstice!  Or maybe I’ll start the tradition of Scotland’s “first-footing which starts immediately after midnight on New Years. This involves being the first person (usually tall and dark haired) to cross the threshold of a friend or neighbor and often involves the giving of symbolic gifts such as salt (less common today), coal, shortbread, whisky, and black bun (a fruit pudding) intended to bring different kinds of luck to the householder.” (source Wikipedia).  With my dark and graying hair maybe the neighbors would like a little whiskey or salt!