Agricultural Calendar

The first day of Bires is the end of the new year celebration, the greatest amount of foolishness mounting on that day. Onions, leeks, flax and hemp are planted. Calves are weaned when grazing pastures being to show good growth, while the milking of cows twice a day began along with butter churning and cheesemaking. Piglets are born (farrowing).
On the first of Lotes, the Lotepole is raised for the celebration of the Lotalion where all dance around the pole holding on to garlands as they wrap around it. The Queen of Lotes or the Lotatary is crowned as a part of the festivities. Beans are also thrown to signify and begin their sowing. Lotes is the busiest month of the year with weeding the winter grain fields; planting beans, beets, cabbages, parsnips and carrots, along with vegetables and herbs in the garden; removing moss from thatched roofs and repairing them; marking sheep; and catching bees for honeymaking. During the last week of Lotes, the Binding Days and the Bindgang performed for renewing wards protecting the bounds of the village. Some bindings are carried out during the day with banners, many depicting guardian animals and homages to local Wise Ones, with a cloth or carved dragon and lion leading the procession, while other bindings are performed at night by ceremonial and apotropaic torchlight.
Naria sees the washing and shearing of sheep, with lambs sheared later in the month. When the weather is dry enough, hay is mowed with a scythe and left in piles or stacked on wooden frames to dry, which are then turned with pitchforks. The 24th of the month is Midsummer, to celebrate the solstice, for which there is a wisp- and candlelit parade with displays any of flashy enchantments that can be obtained followed by revelry. Three fires are made for the feast: the bone fire, the wood fire, and the fire of both.
Into Cermia hay is still being mowed at the opportunity of dry weather and stacks turned. Flax and hemp are harvested. The harvest of the winter grain is also begun, celebrated with Loaf Day. There is one enchanted loaf for the community used in a protective ritual.
Winter grain harvest is continued into Urim and the spring grain harvest is ready before it's over. Straw is gathered and turnips are planted.
Yaun is a full month. Fields are plowed for winter grain and the wheat and rye are sown. Cattle are bred. Peas are harvested, apples and blackberries picked, and honey collected. It is a big month for the market. On the full moon closest to the equinox the harvest festival is celebrated: the stubble goose is cooked, gathered nuts are cracked, and a bread of all available grains is baked. Daisies are an important symbol as the last flowers remaining before winter. The bailiff or reeve is elected and takes up the accounts for the year.
In Narquel the winter crop of barley and oats are sown, sheep are bred, and pannage is carried out: pigs are let to forage on acorns and beechnuts in the woods. (In the south, grapes are harvested and wine made.) At the end of the month, the festival of Allhallows is held on Airaeve. That night many tutelars and subject spirits of Death himself lead a procession and wild dance of all corpses rising from their grave, bones bounding out of charnel houses, and the living drawn into the dance without partiality. It is an event looked upon with trembling anticipation, the festivities meant to abate the terror of the dance with simple pleasures. Some are said to be enthralled with the dance so greatly that they never return to the living, unburied, or wandering the world in undead ecstasy. And so the dread hangs over all as the world begins to chill.
Hissim sees the fattening of pigs while grains are threshed and winnowed, wood cut, firewood is gathered, and forests coppiced. Midhissim yuletide begins with various festivities until midnarwin.
Upon Rigger hogs are slaughtered. Shoveling manure is a thing to do while it's cold. On the 24th, the winter solstice, begins the twelve day festival of Midwinter (also called Yule) commencing with the Mothers' Night or Disamore, offerings to female guardian spirits. Wild boar and goat are the preferred meals to be prepared. Festivities are mainly in homes, with as many people gathering in the largest houses and traveling from one to another while singing on the way. It is the time of the greatest activity of the Wild Hunt.
Narwin: Woodcutting and sawing. Spreading manure on the fields. Playing a game on fallow fields called camping, a game of tag with taking the other team as prisoner, to break up the clods of earth. Pigs are bred. Lambs are born. Clearing the ditches along hedgerows. As fields are fertilized, the Blessing of the Plough takes place at the end of first week in anticipation of the break of winter in two months.
The cold days continue through Nen and grow coldest, but there is increasing work to do. Add lime and chalk and more manure to fields. As more lambs will be born, the first day of Nen is Lambing, a day where men dress thick costumes of straw and take on a number of duties, including purging beasts encroaching on the village as winter goes on and bidding the spirits for fertility and performing charms. The hearthfire is at the center, special food is prepared for austerity, cleansing, and mild celebration, and candles are lit from the hearth. Omens are watched carefully, particularly the emergence of badgers and snakes to predict the coming of spring and divination is performed in attempt to read the fates and forecast the year. In desperate times, the straw bears engage in purification by fire. Blackthorns bloom. Calving begins. Mending fences. Planting willow. Pruning and mending hedgerows, along with pruning fruit trees. Killing moles.
In Sully the ground is plowed and harrowed as soon as the frost has broken and it's soft enough. The spring grains are planted, along with flax and hemp if possible. Calves continue to be born. At the end of Sully, on the 25th, the festival of spring and the dawn of the new year begins, lasting all week until the final culminating day on the first of Bires. At the equinox, the least care is given to warding evil, in fact is blatantly disregarded and lampooned as it is the ethereally thickest night of the year.
== Themes ==
* Life: Esterfeast (Sully 25) - Thickest Night of Year
* Heat: Midsummer (Naria 24) - Brightest Night of the Year
* Death: Allhallows (Narquel 31) - Thinnest Night of the Year
* Cold: Midwinter/Yule (Rigger 24) - Darkest Night of the Year
== Sources ==
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/the-medieval-agricultural-year/
http://www.witheridge-historical-archive.com/medieval-year.htm
https://rosaliegilbert.com/holidays.htmlCategory:Time
Category:Odenna