It’s mid December and we are moving closer and closer to winter solstice, the point on the calendar marking the return of the shortest day, abundant darkness and the metaphorical turning of the seasonal wheel. We are also moving toward the time of “the holidays” where our mainstream culture celebrates with buying and gifting mass produced products.

As modern homesteaders being honest with our upbringing and the overculture that we swim in, our family still partakes in our share of mainstream celebrations too, but we are also, perhaps especially, looking for ways to connect our celebrations and rituals with the land, with Mother Earth, for lasting natural connection and meaning felt deeply by our hearts.

Today I want to share a story about a different kind of gift, one that can’t be purchased. This story is my gift to you, human kin.

As we near the winter solstice, like the climax between the perceived bell curve representing shortening and lengthening daylight, our attention to and rituals with seeds are also reaching a seasonal climax.

We are still talking about the seeds we collected from this most recent gardening season. We are still continuing to clean some of the seeds, but the majority of them are cleaned and carefully stashed away, if not on beautiful display in our home, for saving, sowing, sharing, selling, eating and drinking. We are already well into eating some of the seeds that we grew this year, such as corn, peas and fava beans.

We’re also already thinking about planting seeds. First the fava beans and wheat to overwinter, who were planted in October and November respectively. Then we started planting perennial flower, herb and tree seeds to cold stratify over winter. We are still planting seeds to cold stratify through this mid December weekend still, but soon most of our planting of seeds will be done, and those seeds will be left to rest and slowly wake while they stratify through the winter.

Then our attention will move again to seeds for next year’s veggies and flowers. Well, to be honest I’ve already started thinking about veggie seeds that I want to plant next year, but I am glad and relaxed to know there is plenty of time until I will start sowing the first veggie seeds sometime in February.

As we approach winter solstice our lives around seeds is also reaching a pivotal point, a turning point. Its easier for us moderns to think about seasonal shifts as pivotal points, but I personally perceive seasonal transformation as a flowing gradient with long, subtle, smooth, almost timeless transitions. There are no points on the seasonal circle, which infers there is no start or end to any one season nor to the whole.

Even though putting specific points on the circle sometimes helps me feel more succinct and deliberate about comprehending when to plant, when to celebrate, or when to pay taxes, I take great joy in knowing that I am part of the continuum of time and movement, like the stream flowing from the mountain who doesn’t begin in the mountain, and doesn’t even begin in the trees who transpire moisture up from deep in the soil and through their leaves leaves into the atmosphere to eventually become rain clouds, who will quench the mountains where the stream is born—the stream actually began billions of years ago when this planet was formed.

Really, the stream began far before this planet’s birth in the long past origins of our universe, as well whatever is out beyond that, a trillion times over. Honestly, I don’t try to comprehend any of that (it’s all about as comprehensible to me as the Earth is to a bacteria in my body), other than to appreciate that we are all living in the flow of life.

Like the water in the stream I am both the descendant and the ancestor in the flow of the genome (aka magical life instructions) that this body temporarily holds and builds upon in all its wisdom. How many seeds did my long past ancestors hold after harvesting and before planting, contemplating the miracle of life that they were aligning with through seed?

Countless. Countless seeds.

Some of the seeds we grow or harvest are so tiny that I could never count them individually. Some seeds are like specks of dust or grains of sand. In a few hours’ time I can harvest millions of such seeds from certain plants.

When I think about it, it’s mind boggling. So I stop thinking about it to revel in the awesomeness of it all as I scatter the seeds to the wind and let them dust the earth, trusting to Mother Earth and the seed to decide who should become plants or food for the soil web.

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The more “meatier” seeds that we rely on for staple foods are often much larger. Like the corn, beans, squash, acorns, walnuts and wheat seeds that our family regularly eats, for example. If I wanted to, I could count those seeds after I harvested them. I could know exactly how many I grew, foraged or bought, to quantify the results of our efforts or the demands of our diets perhaps.

Anyway, I find it more satisfying to wonder in awe on the countless generations before me that held such nourishing seeds in their hands. The seeds in my hands, and my hands themselves, are much less significant until I step back from my short, little life and consider the generations ahead of me and you, dear reader.

The seeds our generations’ hands hold now will become the plantcestors that ensure our human descendants’ collective ability to live and thrive.

When I am nearing winter solstice, I still feel fall, summer and spring in my body. But they feel different than they did any other place along the circle of the seasons. Even in the depths of winter, when I hold a seed in my hands I can feel, remember and recognize the potential growing plant inside that seed and how that plant’s green kin has influenced me through the seasons.

As gardeners we could say our lifestyle revolves around the seasons or we could say our lifestyle revolves around seeds and we’d be talking about the same thing. Holding seeds is to be human.

We rely on seeds for everything. They give us the plants that nourish, heat, shelter and heal us. They clean water and create rain while fertilizing the soil. They even offer tools and materials for creative arts.

Seeds really are the gift of the season. Seeds are the gifts that keep giving. Literally—they give to us gardeners unconditionally generation after generation, plant after plant.

Our family honors the gift of seeds all season long by centering and aligning our lives and gardening rituals with the needs and lives of seeds. We honor and cherish their beauty and lives in our home. We honor and cherish them in the garden when they take plant form again.

We give thanks to the seeds that nourish us as we eat them. Last night we enjoyed wild turkey pozole soup with home grown nixtamalized flint corn alongside acorn bread and I felt so grateful for these seeds of sustenance that within a few bites, swallows and hours have already become one with this body.

Really, so much magic is happening within and without. I cannot even begin to comprehend the miracle of my digestive system who harbors trillions of individual microscopic life forms within it to help me process food so that I can live, walk and breath. Or perhaps I am helping those billions of microscopic lives live by holding a container for them.

In the end, it is all symbiotic and interdependent for the corn and acorn are as much a part of those bacteria, cells and mitochondria as they are a part of me … wait, what am I again? This logic can only conclude that I am corn and acorn.

What am I if not the seeds I eat? If not our ancestors holding the seeds they tended and loved? If not our descendants looking out wide eyed at this beautiful world?

As we move toward the marked time of abundant darkness, seasonal celebration and metaphorical re-birth I am holding seeds in my hands and especially in my heart. My heart recognizes this beauty and interdependence between plant and human. My gardener’s heart sings with joy as I dance with the seeds in, out of and around the seasons.

Seeds are such a gift to receive as a human birthright. Seeds are always there calling on us and allowing us to pick them up, tend them, eat them, plant them and celebrate life with them.

I do not believe seeds are here for us to have. I believe they are here with us to live.

I am kindling a relationship between seeds and my heart for the precious short time that we share together.