Like Iduna and her apples
Published: Wed, 11/06/13
I have two 12inch aluminum cooking pots which I bought in Beverley
15 or 16 years ago. I needed them for cooking on a Stav camp and I
have been using them ever since. If you have been to Stav Camp
then you probably had your morning porridge cooked in one or other
of them. Right at this moment one is sitting on the cooker filled
with chopped up apples and a little bit of quince paste. Over the
next couple of hours the apples will simmer on the stove and become
stewed apple. We will eat some and the rest will go into the
freezer which will soon have around 20kg of cooked apple stored
inside. This morning I picked up another 5kg or so of apples from
under the trees after I had done my stances in the garden. There
are still quite a lot left on one tree but within a week they will
have fallen. The main thing is to get as many apples prepared and
stored before the frost comes which will pretty much ruin any left
outside. It is probably taking me about an hour each day to
prepare, cook and store the apples. However I am working at home
this week and once the apples are gone then that will be it for
next year. During the winter it will be nice to defrost a batch
whenever we want some cooked apple.
If I didn't bother or didn't have the time to worry about
apples they would probably just rot on the ground. Last year it
didn't really matter because the two trees seemed to produce
about 4 tiny apples between them. This year the season has been so
good for fruit that I will probably end up with over 20kg of fruit
in the freezer just from our two small trees. But if I don't
act now all that fruit will just be wasted.
When people complain that the are not getting anywhere in life it
is common to claim that they had no opportunities to succeed.
That might be true but it is more likely that opportunities were
not noticed, or even more likely, not grasped at the right moment.
Right now I have the opportunity to fill the freezer with delicious
apple. In two weeks time the lawn would just be covered with frost
damaged and rotting fruit, so it is now, or hope for a decent crop
again next year (which certainly wasn't the case last year).
At the moment it is just over five weeks until I hear from the
council whether or not we have our planning permission for the Stav
centre, so I am doing my best to work on the membership scheme
which is what will make sense of the whole project. A key aspect
is the on-line video training which will be added too each week.
It has taken a little while and some feedback from members to get
the settings right but I am getting there. So far we have the
first news letter which covers how to study the runes and and a
beginners guide to Norse mytholgy. A video lesson on how to do the
Fe Galdre (the Ur one is recorded and ready to post later this
month) and some lessons on how to work with the stances with and
without the staff. Also Ivar teaching stances exercises and
applications at the camp last September.
I also want to be as ready as possible to exploit the PR
opportunities when we get the go ahead from the council. That
means getting the press releases ready for immediate action, more
on that soon.
If you want to take action to be part of this then you can join at
http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/join.html
regards
Graham
PS If you don't know who Iduna is then you definitely need to
join Ice and fire and learn your Norse mythology.