Chapter 4: Spring Equinox or “Alban Emilie” (the light of the earth) at Rhuddin 🐝
🙏 🌎 🌞 🌱
March 2025
I ambled over to the newly planted native trees to see how they were getting on. How lovely then to see little green leaves appearing and other younglings earnestly holding up burgeoning colourful buds to the clear March sky. The meadow felt super dry underfoot, it has been a while now since any decent rainfall here. If this dry spell continues much longer, this special time on the year’s calendar may have to include a rain dance around the ceremonial fire instead of ushering in the spring sunshine!
For we have had a couple of weeks of bright sun here. Still, it was wonderful to be able to lie back easily on the dry grass and look up at the big sky. I lay back and watched a family of red kites doing their acrobatic turns, their beautiful markings flashing brightly in the sunlight. Last year we spotted their nest in one of the oak trees at the bottom and it was good to see them still circling around these skies.
A few days ago, Oz was doing some mulching and spotted a leveret. Hares love grassland and hedges and woodland edges so it is no surprise that we have spotted them several times here at Rhuddin. Hares do not live in burrows like rabbits and the leverets are born with full fur and sight, ready for survival. They shelter in little ‘forms’ or dips in the ground where they lie flat so as to not be discovered. A new leveret’s strong survival instinct is to freeze if they sense danger from a predator, trusting in their good camouflage, pressed down close to the ground. This is exactly what the leveret was up to when Oz first spotted him, tucked away under a log near the newly planted trees. A dear little creature indeed who, once he realised he had been spied, growled like a gremlin and went into boxing mode when Oz came too close! Since hares love to graze on the bark of young trees and bushes, I was thankful that the little trees were secured away in their guards for now, away from the furry nibblers.
On our journey back to the barn, we rolled another heaped wheelbarrow of firewood from the coppiced old hedge. It was interesting to see how quickly a worker’s path had formed in the fields, a little curvy line through the grass where volunteers had meandered back with tools, keen to be warmed up with tea and cake.
Oz warmed up today doing another round of wood splitting and stacking. Though clear and sunny, a chilly easterly wind pulled the temperature down there by the stream, especially in the shadows. And now we head into the celebration of Alban Eilir, the spring equinox where day and night are of equal length, due to the alignment of sun and earth’s equator. Yet there is still a noticeable jostle in the seasons. While Spring flies in with new force, Winter does not seem quite ready to relinquish the throne.
We went on to another satisfying job: pulling out more rusty stock fencing from the old grown out hedge. Layers of abandoned fencing showed the sheep grazing history of the fields. Two of us heaved at posts and barbed wire and rusty fence that over the years had been left and replaced and was now half engulfed by the land. With one of us snipping the posts free and another carefully folding up and stomping down the rusty metal wires into a manageable roll , it was satisfying to lift it up and away, another gentle whisper of a new chapter for the fields here. I imagined that the land softened and sighed with relief but I think it was more the welcome idea of us being able to amble barefoot without coming a cropper.
At the end of the day, beautiful afternoon light bathed the hills to the west and a peachy luminescence filled the mountain sky.
Traditionally this is a time in the wheel of the year’s turning where preparation is made for the season ahead. At Rhuddin, a local fellow will help us top the meadow soon (the grass was mostly brought down at the end of autumn) and we will be marking out the positions for our next exciting wave of planting on contour ….
🙏 🌎 🌞 🌱
