Hearth Warming Connections

As part of planning our March 16 Women's Wisdom; Sacred Agriculture gathering, I "borrowed" Rachel's Nest Group to help me gather the necessary firewood and, of course, use some of it to light a test-fire.  If you give a youngster a fire...

He'll ask for a stick and bread-dough... and so they did and so we did!

 Here's the first draft of our Hearth Warming Ritual:

Imagine Sister Pine; roots spreading in the earth, reaching into crevices, seeking water and nutrients, splitting rocks, yet binding earth together.

Imagine Sister Pine; trunk standing straight and tall; reaching up and up linking heaven and earth– branches reaching out to gather air and sun.

Breathe in a deep slow breath of air and as we exhale – LISTEN for the sound of wind in her branches

Take another deep breath and hear the air filling the branches and brachioles and avioli of our lungs as they gather in the oxygen we need to live.

As we exhale hear the wind in Sister Pine's branches as she gathers in the CO2 she needs to live.

Take a few more deep imaging breaths. We are joined with Sister Pine. Our waste air is her source of life. Her waste air is ours.

As she grows, Sister Pine's roots spread further and further in the earth and her crown, the tip of her trunk plunges deeper and deeper into heaven. Her branches spread further and further, gathering and storing the energy of the sun.

As her upper branches spread and grow, they shade her lower branches. Deprived of the life-giving sun, the lowest branches die and dry and wait...

a gift of sun's energy stored as resin and firewood for us to harvest.

For countless years, women of this hemisphere have gathered these gifts from Sister Pine to kindle their hearths.

Hearth; center of home, center of heat, center of cooking, center of nourishment; heart of life... Hearth. Heart... Hearth. Heart... Hearth. Heart.

For generations, women have placed the tiniest of Sister Pine's twigs around a glowing ember. We have fanned flames of life into life.

By adding bigger twigs and small sticks, the flames dance higher.

(Sing: Rise up oh flame, by thy light glowing. Show to us beauty, vision and joy.)

For a lasting fire we call on bigger sticks and logs of oak and maple, hickory and ash, cherry and birch. What gifts do we bring to this hearth today? As you receive your name tag, please step forward , add a stick to the fire and name a gift that, like Sister Pine, you offer to this day.

Composing with Noah's home-made turkey quill pen

Spoon Carving and Campfire Cooking

Sixteen Successfully Seasoned Spoon Carvers

On August 23, Joe Brien of Lost Arts workshops demonstrated how to light a fire without matches. We used flint and steel to create a spark in charcloth, then friction of a bow drill to ignite a bit of wood. The tiny ember was carefully transferred to a tinder pack of very fine combustible materials and encouraged to burn with a light breath of air. Once we got a fire started we turned to our spoons.

Starting with pre-cut blanks of easy-to-carve basswood, we learned to keep a safe distance from our neighbors, to carve away from ourselves, and to work with the grain of the wood. Sometimes we levered against an angle of the spoon to round corners and edges.


We left the bowl of the spoon to be hollowed with a live ember from the fire. Holding the ember in place with a scrap of wood, we blew on the coal until the area we wished to remove was charred and brittle. Then we scraped away the burned wood with our wood scrap and/or sandpaper.


Wyatt Whiteman of 1760's Farm House prepared a vegetable stew in a cast iron dutch oven hung over the fire by a tripod The soup and spoons were finished in time for lunch.

For Wyatt's DVD on Hearth Cooking: 1760farmhouse
Visit lostartworkshops for info on Joe's workshops.
Joe's presentation was funded by individual donations and
a grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism