A guide to help you reconnect with the seasons, through gardening, eating seasonally, moon gazing, foraging, celebrating feast days and picking bunches of seasonal flowers
The book revives the tradition of the rural almanac for a new audience. This is planned as the first edition of an annual publication, each edition split into 12 monthly sections. It is aimed at readers who want to connect with the seasons, through gardening, eating seasonally, moon gazing, foraging, celebrating feast days and picking seasonal flowers.
A set of tables each month will give it the feel and weight of a traditional almanac, providing practical information that gives access to the outdoors and the seasons, useful for expeditions, meteor-spotting nights and beach holidays. There will also be essays on each month’s unique nature, folklore and stories, seasonal recipes and ID charts relevant to the month.
The aim of the almanacs is to give you the tools and inspiration you need to celebrate, mark and appreciate each month of the year in your own particular way.
Each monthly section will contain:
Information tables: significant calendar dates; the phases of the moon; sunrise and sunset times; king tides; equinoxes, solstices and cross-quarter days; food in season; what to sow and harvest in the kitchen and flower garden; a forager’s guide; the sky at night (meteor showers, planets visible, lunar eclipses); festivities (Samhain, Wassailing, Divali, Midsummer, Hallowe’en etc).
A recipe using seasonal ingredients/relating to the month’s festivity: Cider cake for wassailing in January; Blood orange tart in February; Potato kugel gratin for Passover in April; Beltane wine for May Day; Broad bean, pea shoot and pecorino salad in June; Sticky cinnamon figs in September; soul cakes at Hallowe’en.
A short essay on an aspect of the month, some historical, some practical, some contemplative: In August: Who is John Barleymow? Where do swifts go in September? In October: The story of gourmet garlics and how to plant them; in December: the tradition of the midwinter fire.
An ‘ID page’ related to the month: Identify trees by their bare buds in January; cloud formations in April; hedgerow flowers in July; beach lifeguard’s flags in August.
My hope is that you will refer to your almanac all year long, revisiting it again and again, and looking forward to the next edition as the year draws to a close.
More information
Lia Leendertz
I am an award-winning garden and food writer with an allotment and garden in Bristol. I write a weekly column for the Telegraph, a monthly column for The Garden magazine, and contribute frequently to the Guardian and Gardens Illustrated. I write a long-running series on growing and eating seasonally for Simple Things magazine, and have most recently written for them on new ways to mark the year using the old Celtic agricultural festivals such as Lammas and Beltane, through seasonal food and drink and fireside gatherings. I am the author of several gardening books and in April 2016 had my first cookbook published, ‘Petal, Leaf, Seed: cooking with the garden’s treasures’. I love to find creative ways of connecting my city kids to the outside world and the seasons.
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5th October 2017Thank yous, almanacs, amazon and allotments
Well most of you by now have received your almanacs (other rewards very much on their way!), and I want to thank you for the wonderful responses. It was such a joy to write, and to find that it has hit the spot with so many of you is a great feeling. You made this book possible, and I am glad we have created something you love. Many of you have been very vocal about how happy you are with it,…
17th May 2017Cover reveal! And last chance saloon...
It is my great pleasure to present to you...the cover for the Almanac 2018! Its innards - tables of moon phases, sun rise and set times, the sky at night each month, seasonal celebratory recipes, monthly folklore, planting by the moon and more - are still being tweaked and finessed into final shape by proof reader, designer and illustrator, but this will be the cover, gloriously illustrated by…
21st December 2016Midwinter progress report
Hello! Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day, and it seemed like a good moment to give a little report back on progress on the almanac since funding reached 100% back in October. Thrillingly, the support has continued to come in and the almanac is currently funded to 109%, but I have been able to take my foot off of the sales pedal and start on the creating. We have engaged a wonderful illustrator…
20th October 2016Thank YOU!
Somehow, incredibly, we have hit 100%! What a wonderful rush that final 5% was! And I just wanted to write a very quick thank you to you all, it all feels brilliant. I think it is most probably giving away WAY too much to let you know that I most probably saw every single name come in, and have silently thanked you already, and in some cases punched the air if your pledge was one that tipped me over…
17th October 2016Arne Maynard message of support & reward!
The Almanac has received a perfect message of support from Arne Maynard, which I thought I would share as I am so delighted, being a huge admirer of Arne's garden designs and general approach to life (see his beautiful Allt-y-bela, above, photo by William Collinson). Arne says:
“We have lost touch with our traditional festivals and natural timings of the year, many of which aid our gardening…
3rd October 2016Your October mini almanac
At the beginning of September I wrote here about ironing brand new white shirts, sharpening pencils, lining up shiny black shoes by the front door. Now it is October, and I sat down to something Octoberish, while determined to avoid three particular words. Damn it’s hard. There are a lot of apples in my life right now, and a slow acceptance of the need for cosiness in food and in life in general…
20th September 2016Autumn equinox
Here is your latest almanac snippet! The sort of information that you will just have to hand once you have your Almanac. I feel slightly like the bearer of gloom this time, as this Thursday marks the autumn equinox, when day and night are of equal length. This state of delicate balance lasts for one day only before we are tipped into the dark half of the year. Persephone is off to the underworld…
14th September 2016The New Almanac Gardening Clubs
Join one of my gardening clubs!
Among the rewards on offer as part of my crowdfunder are two brilliant gardening clubs in conjunction with excellent nurseries Otter Farm and Higgledy Garden. You see, a section in each month of the almanac will be a guide to when and how to do things in the garden, and I thought: why don’t we just start that now? So we will with bells on. Join one of my gardening…
10th September 2016Harvest moon eclipse
In keeping with my plan to give you little tasters of what the almanac will include I wrote last week about dusk times. Now it is the turn of the moon, because we are coming up to an exciting moon week when it is worth keeping an eye on the skies.
September's full moon, which falls next Friday 16th at around 8pm UK time, has long been known as the Harvest Moon. Because of the moon's autumnal ellipsis…
8th September 2016Party!
Though all pledges are received with glee, I have to admit that I get most excited during this crowdfunding journey when someone pledges to come along to my launch party. Perhaps it's the excellent faith it shows - yes, there will be a book to launch! - or perhaps it's just that I like a party, and I think this will be a lovely one. Anyway, there have been a few developments on the party planning…
5th September 2016Today's twilights and dusks
The idea for The New Almanac came from a desire to be more in touch with the world around me, just in very simple ways like: when is the sun coming up tomorrow? What is that bright star in the sky? Today I’ve been thinking about and researching dusk, and there’s a phrase I don’t get to say every day. In recent days dusk has rushed in, a definite change from the light evenings of summer, and through…
Lynne Dark asked:
Good morning!
Can you tell me how the almanac will translate in the central highlands of Scotland? Will the 'timings' be very different?
Thank you,
Lynne
Lia Leendertz replied:
Hi Lynne, some of these things will have different timings, some not. The detail still needs to be hammered out about how we work it but I think we either give several timings - north, middle, south - or plump for somewhere central and then give the differential for different parts of the country ('add three minutes' etc). The aim is absolutely to make it useful throughout the country.
Lynne Dark asked:
Hi Lia,
Great to hear we will be included in the plan up here in Scotland! I have pledged my order and look forward to 2018. Wishing you the best of luck with this wonderful project...
Lia Leendertz replied:
Thanks Lynne!
Mark Evens asked:
This sounds very interesting, but it would be wonderful if nature itself was used as the benchmark for seasons. In other words, to observe what is happening in nature and to use that as the clue for the gardening activities. Dates are irrelevant and the impact of the moon highly debatable, but what to do when the May blossom is out or the first damsel flies emerge or the first autumn tinge, there's the thing. And it doesn't matter so much where you live. Will the almanac approach things from this point of view?
Lia Leendertz replied:
Ah well now...that is a lovely idea in itself, there is a whole other book there... but yes it is a little different to what I have in mind, mainly because the whole idea behind the almanac is to celebrate the months, to look at every aspect of what makes them what they are, from gardening to food to folklore and more. So in this case there really do have to be dates! Hope you still fancy it.
Sue Tyler asked:
Hi Lia
I would like to pledge as a gift for my sister in law who lives in France - not far from St Emillion. Is it possible to do this so that she can email / Skype you with her "garden woes" and will your almanac apply to her area also? I will treat myself too!
Thank you.
Sue
Lia Leendertz replied:
Hi Sue,
What a lovely idea, yes I would be very happy to skype or email chat with your sister in law as she prefers. As to your other question: this is very much intended as an almanac for the UK, so she will find that the pure 'information' parts of the book are not accurate to where she lives. However, there are lots of other parts to it: recipes, essays on aspects of the month, ID charts relevant to the month, and so on that I hope would keep her interest! Hope that helps.
Lia
Good morning! Can you tell me how the almanac will translate in the central highlands of Scotland? Will the 'timings' be very different? Thank you, Lynne
Hi Lynne, some of these things will have different timings, some not. The detail still needs to be hammered out about how we work it but I think we either give several timings - north, middle, south - or plump for somewhere central and then give the differential for different parts of the country ('add three minutes' etc). The aim is absolutely to make it useful throughout the country.
Hi Lia, Great to hear we will be included in the plan up here in Scotland! I have pledged my order and look forward to 2018. Wishing you the best of luck with this wonderful project...
Thanks Lynne!
This sounds very interesting, but it would be wonderful if nature itself was used as the benchmark for seasons. In other words, to observe what is happening in nature and to use that as the clue for the gardening activities. Dates are irrelevant and the impact of the moon highly debatable, but what to do when the May blossom is out or the first damsel flies emerge or the first autumn tinge, there's the thing. And it doesn't matter so much where you live. Will the almanac approach things from this point of view?
Ah well now...that is a lovely idea in itself, there is a whole other book there... but yes it is a little different to what I have in mind, mainly because the whole idea behind the almanac is to celebrate the months, to look at every aspect of what makes them what they are, from gardening to food to folklore and more. So in this case there really do have to be dates! Hope you still fancy it.
Hi Lia I would like to pledge as a gift for my sister in law who lives in France - not far from St Emillion. Is it possible to do this so that she can email / Skype you with her "garden woes" and will your almanac apply to her area also? I will treat myself too! Thank you. Sue
Hi Sue, What a lovely idea, yes I would be very happy to skype or email chat with your sister in law as she prefers. As to your other question: this is very much intended as an almanac for the UK, so she will find that the pure 'information' parts of the book are not accurate to where she lives. However, there are lots of other parts to it: recipes, essays on aspects of the month, ID charts relevant to the month, and so on that I hope would keep her interest! Hope that helps. Lia