Welcome to Folk Almanac, a monthly guide to Earth & Season—a meeting place where Earth’s rhythms and the moon’s cycles guide us toward cosmic pathways. Here, you’ll find seasonal noticing, and nature observations for a changing world, rooted in plant wisdom, ancestral traditions, folk practices, and spiritual ecology. This is a sacred space to honor life’s eternal patterns—living, being, and dying—with intention and care.

Each edition is an invitation to slow down, resist the relentless pace of capitalism, and rediscover a sense of reciprocity with the land, the seasons, and the more-than-human world. Together, we’ll celebrate the quiet beauty of small, intentional acts that sustain both our souls and the future we dream of creating.

NATURE OBSERVATIONS IN A CHANGING WORLD

As January bows to February, we arrive at the midway point between winter and spring. The days stretch longer, light lingers, and in small but certain ways, life stirs. Our hens have begun laying their eggs again. Yet, the season feels unmoored. Here in the Midwest, February 1 arrives at nearly 55 degrees, the hills bare and brown—a stark reminder of a shifting climate.

"Mom, there may be no snow in winter when I have kids," Griffin remarked with quiet resignation. The weight of his words settled deep into my bones, an unyielding worry that has weighed on my heart since before he was born. This question, dogging me since my undergraduate degree illuminated the possibility of climate futures which we are now living. A weighty question that has propelled so many of my partner and my life choices these last 14 years. What will life look like in the coming days, weeks, months, years? The Doomsday Clock inches closer to midnight, bureaucracies stall, and my hope flickers like the last ember of a candle. The heaviness, unshakeable. Looking back at pictures recently, I have been longing for the levity, lightness of my youth, when hope still coursed through my veins. And yet, I know I must replenish at the well of my being. Though spring beckons, this is still winter. It is a time for deep rest, for quiet tending to our inner fires.

I give myself permission to rest deeply. Logging off. I give myself the space to shed tears of frustration sprinkled across the pages of my journal. All in the hopes, I will become the bridge, and the next steps will appear as I couple action with trust in the process. We are in threshold times as we midwife new ways of being within ourselves and the Earth. We don’t quite know the face of what will arrives. The dark womb of winter holds us steady, yet the quickening is near.

Monthly Mantra: I tend to the fire within, trusting in quiet growth, unseen yet unstoppable, we rise.