Honeywall Brewery
At the fort on the hill
Follow @HoneywallBeerAll our beers are seasonal - when its time, its time....
All our beers are seasonal - when its time, its time....
We are thinking or organising an event on Feb 2nd, 2015 to revive the old fire festival of Imolc. During the Iron Age and thereabouts, people used to have eight different festivals, equally spaced throughout the year. We still celebrate many of them today (May Day, Halloween, Christmas, Easter, Harvest Festival) but the tradition of celebrating the end of winter has died out.
If you devide the year up into four, using the solstices and equinoxes, and then subdivide the four into eight, you get the dates of the festivals. People used to be able to calculate these dates (probably using devices like Stone Henge) and used these divisions to know where they were in the agricultural timetable.
Imbolc was important because if you knew when it was, you could compare the signs of the ending of the winter and the start of spring with the signs you saw in earlier years. This would enable communities to decide when it would be the right time to seed the new year's crops. And when yours is a subsistance living, you don't want to get it wrong - you may have saved only enough wheat seed to provide for one sowing. If you sow too early the seed may rot in the ground, if you sow too late, you may run out of flour before the new harvest. Timing is the key to survival.
We need artists, picklers, bakers, singers, friers, dancers, revellers, ornithologists and all other sorts of people who connect with the turning of the year.
We will have a hearty fire and music and dance on the afternoon and will organise a nature trail to go out and check for signs of spring.
In some parts of the United States, they still celebrate Groundhog Day by checking the state of a hibernating woodchuck, just as our ancesters might have done (although it would probably have been badgers or squirrels this side of the pond.
We want to revive this old tradition in an English Village and wash the whole celebration down with some English Ale - St Brigid's will be on tap especially for the event.
It will be an event for all ages - kids, couples, families and freinds.
Please Tweet to @HoneywallBeer and give us a hand