Herb Farm Joy: Solstice Eve at Home

The garden holds its breath and listens.
Above, the wanderers shine their slow bright paths.
Below, the rooted ones practice quiet miracles.
Seed becomes promise, stars share stories,
Plants bring nourishment and planets bring belonging.
For a moment, everything remembers it is one.

Summer Solstice Eve at Magical Farm had a beautiful glow. The plants seem almost translucent at the edges, and the whole garden feels like it is participating in something larger than “weather.” A regenenerative farmer once old me ‘5 years’ and it will begin to sing. I felt that the other night and I also felt the magic of life: the plants and planets….

For me, this season carries a simple invitation to bring the wide view home, in a deeper kind of leadership, where vision becomes something you can live, where the future is built through relationship rather than rhetoric, where the everyday is treated as sacred because it is where nourishment is made real.

Plants and planets closeness on the tongue feels like a clue, because they carry two gestures that hold a life. A planet is a wanderer, a moving light that travels across the dark, and a plant is something placed, set into earth, rooted and sprouting, spreading its quiet intelligence into soil. Wanderer and rooted one, motion and belonging, horizon and home, and suddenly an interconnected view of life becomes easy to understand because it becomes easy to feel.

Plants are not as still as we imagine, because they travel through seed and pollen, through cuttings carried in a friend’s hands, through compost and wind, through the soft multiplication of life that never needs applause. And planets, for all their wandering, move with patterns that shape our sense of time, offering rhythm and return, reminding us that life is not random but cyclical, ripening, resting, beginning again.

Solstice is one of those special thresholds where everything turns. Where the light reaches its height and then, almost imperceptibly, begins to tilt toward the other half of the year, and that turning lands in the body as much as it lands in the sky. It lands in the kitchen and the conversations we are willing to have, in the way we choose to show up, in the way we decide what matters.

When I say an interconnected view of life, I mean the plain, beautiful chain that is happening all the time. Sun becomes leaf, leaf becomes soil, soil becomes nourishment, nourishment becomes mood, mood becomes choice, choice becomes culture, and culture becomes the way we treat land and each other. On Solstice Eve that chain feels almost touchable, as if the world is briefly showing its inner architecture, and it becomes obvious that renewal doesn’t arrive as an argument, it arrives as a living network of small acts and steady care, a mycelium way, many local threads becoming one shared strength.

So these images and videography are not just a record of a beautiful night, they are a reminder of how life actually works, luminous, ordinary, woven. The wanderers above, the rooted ones below, and us learning, again and again, how to belong to both, how to carry a horizon while tending the ground, how to come home without losing our vision, how to live as if everything is connected because it is.

With love and Con Viv, Dr Demeter x

The Tao of the Chicken: A Virgo New Moon Reflection

Tapping in will forces, healing currents, and unexpected teachers under the new moon and royal star

Regulus, one of the four Royal Stars of ancient Persia, shines as the healer’s guide, connected with Archangel Raphael and the direction of the North…the place where higher destiny calls us. I have written about the way finding whale also going North. Under this Virgo New Moon we are invited to open to the Divine within (Virgo is connected to the high priestess and sacred ceremony). We are reminded to listen to the heart-centered intelligence that unfailingly guides us toward beauty, truth, healing, and connection.

Astrologer Tami Brunk reminds us: change is not the enemy. We must FLOW. As I opened my farm gate this evening (day of this new moon), I looked at a sign I have there with the word flower on it. I saw FLOWer, and now I will think about flowers with yet another dimension. Resistance is so often just the trembling before the unknown. What if we are more ready than we realise? And it is only the mind that lags behind the body, the spirit, the soul?

This moon asks us to soften, to trust, to allow the currents of life to carry us, especially when we feel clumsy, resistant, or unsure. I’m reminded how often I forget that I don’t have to hold it all together, or force a path forward. Sometimes, the clarity comes not from pushing, but from surrendering into the moment as it is. May we each awaken, again and again, to the colossal field of love that holds us, even when we tense up and even when we forget…. lets get into the flow of it all.

Here at Magical Farm, the new moon has already delivered its first lesson, and I have a funny story to share. Earlier today, six rogue chickens, wing-strong, garden-scratching, and impossible to catch…became my unexpected teachers. For 90 determined minutes, I leapt, chased, and wrestled until, one by one, I caught every single one. Their will forces were immense, but I discovered mine too. This afternoon, I was reminded of my own endurance and determination, not on a fencing piste, not in a policy meeting, nor while designing futures through my studio, but here on the farm, where the forces of life make themselves known. The Tao of the Chicken: when the time comes, strength meets strength, and balance is restored.

Even more beautifully, my son Raphael joined me in the chase! Full of passion, support, laughter, and determination. With Archangel Raphael’s star shining above and Raphael’s hands beside me, I felt the healing current of will, love, and joy moving through us both.

So may this Virgo New Moon gift you too with the will forces to complete what needs finishing, and to initiate what longs to be born. We are powerful beings, woven into rhythms larger than ourselves.

If you would like to tune into your will forces consider Dandelion Flower Essence from Magical Farm to support you.

See link to the farm’s FLOWer Essence Shop here: 🌼 Dandelion Flower Essence for Strength in Flow: Hand-harvested at Magical Farm, this essence captures the spirited resilience of dandelion thriving even in wild places, just like the unexpected lessons of farm life. Dandelion helps release tension stored in the body from over-effort or resistance, supporting you to meet life’s challenges with grounded determination rather than force. It’s the perfect ally when your will is strong, but your muscles are tight reminding you that true strength moves with the current, not against it. Take when life feels like a wrestling match, and you’re ready to find power in the now.

With love, soil and soul…
Dr. Demeter