Harvesting Love: Hemp Harvest in Southern Oregon
Whoo whee! As of about three weeks ago, our hemp harvest is complete! With the help of good friends, family, and community members, we were able to get hundreds of pounds of beautiful green and purple CBD hemp flowers out of the field and into the drying space that Sunny and Seth made with so much care.
Only in our second year of farming, I’m still getting used to the intense rhythms of this ancient art…. long hard days of work for months and months, followed by the shocking (and a little unsettling) spaciousness that comes with shorter days and empty fields.
We’re filling the space just fine, though. Just after we completed hemp harvest, we got to participate in Ashland, Oregon’s First Annual Hemp Farmers’ Market at Spativa Wellness Boutique.
After months of nonstop work in our own little CBD hemp bubble, it was such a treat to finally meet other folks spreading love and beauty through this magical healing plant.
It was even more fun chatting with customers new to CBD’s superpowers—and turning them on to it with samples of Seth’s favorite beverage: hot cocoa with matte, dandelion root blend, maple syrup, and CBD tincture. Try it!! It’s an energizing, anxiety-relieving, mind-clearing way to start the day!
And then… last weekend… we actually got away for two nights of full-on relaxation at a couple of high desert hot springs in Central Oregon. Naps, soaks, novels. Much needed.
And finally, a harvest of another kind. My book, The Soul’s Delights: Recipes for a Life of Love and Beauty, has been published by our very own Nymph and Woodsman Press!
Beginning with the earliest, messiest drafts written in the front seat of my pickup last fall, I have spent a year devoting myself to this collection of 24 recipes for practices, actions, crafts, and tasty treats that want to usher more love and beauty into our daily lives.
Putting it out to the world is one of the most exciting and horrifying things I have ever done. I didn’t expect the horrifying part, but I suppose it makes sense. It’s like being naked in front of a very large audience. And it holds a sense of loss I didn’t expect—the loss of a rhythm and a focus and a daily communion with my piles of colorful pens.
And so I am trying to meet the discomfort with the wise words of Love and Beauty. Let it go, they say. Your work is done. It’s been created in love and shared in love and that’s really all that matters. The process was the gift. Let it have its own life now.
And isn’t that true with all our harvests? Maybe the very best thing we can do is plant, tend, grow, and harvest all that we want to create in the world with loving attentiveness—whether we’re talking about actual plants or our wildest dreams.
And then sit back and trust. Trust that all the beauty, all the joy, and all the care we pour into our passions is already supporting us and the world in ways we can’t yet fathom.
Maybe all we can do is trust the beauties hidden in the now-barren fields and all the potential they hold.
May we feel the love in all our offerings. May we release our harvests to the world with open hands and hearts. May we let our fields rest and replenish when harvest is done. May we reap all the goodness we’ve poured into our works, and then some.
May we brave baring our beautiful selves to the world again and again and again.
