Our little town is the county seat, so every year at this time, we host the county fair, a weekend full of prize produce, antique tractors on display, not to mention sheep, chickens, calves and bunnies, with stick horse races for the youngsters and a big rodeo to round it out. There’s also community meals, live music and food and drink in abundance — something for everyone and then some.
It’s a festive time that not surprisingly coincides with Lammas (or Loaf Mass), an Anglo-Saxon holiday which marks the harvest of “first fruit.”
Found mostly in the Celtic tradition, this holiday revolves around the first cutting of grain and also lauds Lugh, the Sun King, as August is his sacred month. Feasting, market fairs, games and bonfires were all part of these traditional celebrations.
The reasons our British forebearers celebrated this way are the same reasons we do. Spring planting and summer harvest follow the same cycle of days they always have. Much has changed in our modern way of life, but the circle of the sun certainly has not. I find that quite reassuring, and I never tire of discovering these connections to the past and to nature.
I wrote all this about the county fair and its connection to Lammas five Augusts ago, and then went on to say:
“Meanwhile, every year I mean to make jam or a pie to enter in the fair, but I never actually do it…I could beat myself up for not following through, but the truth is, I do follow through on plenty of things. Just not as many as I start. There simply aren’t enough hours to accomplish all the projects that catch my fancy, and try as I might, I can’t seem to pare down my expectations to meet reality…
Which is why I get nostalgic for a past I never actually experienced. A past where folks put up all their winter supplies themselves, where the county fair was the big event of the summer, where slow evening hours unfolded with only the music of insects and birds. A time when the community celebration of first fruit was as essential as the sun. People didn’t have the luxury of too many choices, and therefore drew pleasure from what was available.”
This summer has been unique because, for once, I’ve finished more projects than I’ve started. My children’s book, “The Adventures of Pearl & Theo” — 13 years in the making — finally came out. “The Grass Widow,” the folk opera I began writing 8 years ago, enjoyed its debut staging, which also coincided with the maiden voyage of the Roots & Grass Theater Co’s vintage camper set and stage.
We also held our first-ever writer’s retreat at the ranch — another long-held and planned-for undertaking.
The one thing I STILL didn’t do this summer? Make a pie for the fair. But the older I get, the more comfortable I am with embracing my limitations. Maybe that’s why it suddenly seems easier to finish the things I start and let go of the things I don’t. This summer was also a good reminder that our legacies and traditions extend beyond our bodies, because I did not make a pie; instead, I helped my daughter and my son each make their own. I also helped them gather and label vegetables and flowers from our garden to enter as exhibits. They were thrilled to receive a stack of blue ribbons and even a small cash prize for their efforts.
After the exhibits were entered and judged and the kids and their friends devoured the remains of the pies, they went out to run wild beneath the grandstand at the fairgrounds, playing complicated games of tag with ever-evolving rules, reminding me of my own long-ago summer dusks of capture-the-flag and kick-the-can. Games that meandered across lawns and sidewalks and open lots, each flowing into the other until the street lights clicked on and we all ran home, the cool sheets of our little beds waiting to welcome us back.
