Autumn Equinox 2024

I can usually pinpoint the day that autumn arrives by a shift in the light from one of bright summer intensity to a mellower gold and a subtle change in the air. But this year I didn’t see it. We seem to have drifted from one season to the next without an obvious break where summer ended and autumn began. 

A friend stops by in the first week of September, bringing with her a new saddle for Dimitri. His basket saddle (a sort of baby seat made of wicker designed to be strapped onto a horse) is getting too small now and he’s growing so heavy that I worry his weight, perched on top of Micheál will unbalance the whole thing. I have awful visions of the saddle swinging underneath Micheál’s belly, of Micheál panicking, running off, dragging my child - who is strapped into the saddle - along the dirt roads. These motherhood anxieties are intense and awful at times but I appreciate them raising huge warning flags that make me question what I do to the Nth degree. I’ve upgraded to an Inky Dinky Saddle and the day after it arrives I try it on Micheál. It’s treeless and has adjustable padded panels underneath so it can be fitted to a variety of horses. The pommel and cantle consist of thick, high pads attached with strong velcro to the rest of the saddle and are therefore totally adjustable too. I fit it so that Dimitri is wedged securely into the seat by these pads and we make our first tentative excursion. I’m impressed by how secure the saddle makes him, he’d have to try really hard to fall off, even when Micheál jumps at something or breaks into a few steps of trot. Micheál seems happy with it too. The only issue I can find is that the saddle slips forward when going downhill. This has everything to do with Micheál’s ungainly shape and nothing to do with any flaw in the saddle’s design. Micheál has low withers and a huge belly, neither of which are conducive to holding a saddle in place. I take some old pieces of harness I have knocking about and attach the breaching to the saddle which solves the problem. Micheál takes quickly to his new role and I’m surprised at his eagerness to be ridden. He comes to stand by the field gate almost every morning round about the time I finish my chores, waiting to be caught which he must know means he’ll be saddled up and ridden. It helps that most days we wander up to the big fig tree on the road and he gets to gorge on windfall fruit while Dimitri and I pick whatever ripe figs I can reach. We start slowly just going up to the fig tree at first and gradually increase our distance. Dimitri find the movement tiring and sometimes asks to come down and be carried but overall he loves it and I’m already having fantasies about long distance journeys together in the future.

Fires

The first rains were forecast for the end of the third week of September and I was just beginning to think that we had made it through fire season unscathed by any severe fires due to the relatively cool summer we’d had when suddenly the worst happened. High winds came before the rain and fires broke out all over northern and central Portugal. With low humidity, high wind speeds, and tinder-dry landscapes the fires quickly got out of control. Little more than 4kms away from the farm a fire broke out just after midnight and soon had swept across the many surrounding hectares of broom scrub, pine and eucalyptus plantations. Luckily for us the wind pushed it away but for three days while the winds raged, the horizon to the west and north of us was one enormous smoke cloud. All that was keeping us safe for now was the wind, which could change direction at any moment, and god forbid another fire started upwind of us. Tension reigned, sleep became a restless affair, waking regularly to go out and check for signs of approaching fire on the horizons.

Then at last the winds dropped allowing firefighters to finally get the blazes under control and a few hours later we had rain, glorious heavy, fire-extinguishing rain. The first rains of the season are always such a welcome blessing, soaking the parched and desperate earth, bringing life back to the land, washing away the threat of wildfires. After a week a faint green fuzz appears on the parched terraces and soon there is grass everywhere once more. And suddenly I need to get in the last of the harvest before it spoils - buckwheat, quinoa, chickpeas, beans. The millet isn’t ready yet, I can only hope it manages to mature before it spoils. The same goes for the sesame and experimental crops of rice, which were such late starters this year and haven’t really done anything. Empty beds need clearing, composting, re-sowing with winter crops and mulching. 

The Garden

Mostly thanks to friends who come to watch Dimitri for a few hours here and there, I manage to get some beds cleared and I sow lentils and mustard, fava beans, tremoços, turnips, cabbages, parsnips, carrots, coriander, and radishes.

The tomatoes really come into their own in September and every week I manage to harvest a good few bucketfuls which are turned into passata to bottle and store, or frozen and stashed away in the deepfreeze. I manage to make something like 25 litres of it, which is the most I’ve ever managed, but still isn’t enough to see us through the year. This year I’ve finally worked out a quick and easy way to remove excess liquid from my passata without having to boil it for hours at a time - not something you want to be doing in a small space in hot weather I can assure you!

In early October I sow wheat, rye, oats, spelt, and einkorn. This is the first time I have intentionally sown grain and I’m excited about this new experiment. The plan is that if I can harvest them before the end of June, not only will I have grains to use for bread or animal feed, but the stalks will also provide in-situ mulch for the summer crops that follow, like millet, buckwheat, quinoa, beans, and chickpeas. This year I want to fine-tune my gardening to grow more intelligently and hopefully have to do less for greater return (ha! Like that ever works!)

A little adventure

At the end of October I head out on a little four day wander with Taliesin, Micheál, and the dogs. A neighbour looks after Oisín, Dakota, and the chickens and Dimitri spends the days with his father, then comes to join me at my stop each night. I ride through beautiful landscapes, heading over towards the mountains going from one friend’s place to another, exploring trails - some of which I know, others that are new but that I’ve been keen to explore for a while now. Much of the territory I’ve travelled before but oddly that doesn’t matter to me at the moment. The point is not to have an epic adventure full of challenges and unknowns, it’s simply to be out, reconnecting with myself, my animals, checking in, having a break, and doing something that brings me joy. As journeys go, I think this one is the least adventurous I have ever done. There are no encounters with out of control equines, the routes are easy, the days short, there are minimal encounters with traffic, and I know exactly where I’m staying each night - but the weather is glorious and I am so content to be out moving gently through the landscape, alone with my thoughts. Usually when I travel I get lost in daydreams about life, visions of the future, plans for the farm, things I want to do, improvements I want to make, but this time I’m surprised to find myself being almost completely present, in the here and now, simply enjoying what is. It is the most mindful I think I have ever been. Having to keep 4 animals each with their own ideas of what they want to be doing under control definitely helps to keep my mind from wandering too far as I bask in the autumn sunshine and drink in the stunning views. As I go, I gather seeds from plants and trees I pass to plant when I get home. Mostly I gather ash which I want to use to make a hedgerow, but I also gather mullein and tilia seeds. Then all too soon we’re home again, back in the same old routines, life as usual.