Photo by Izzy Henry for Beltane Fire Society.

Summer is tired.

She has been working hard to fulfill our needs, giving us food out of season, starting earlier and staying later each year. She loves us, cares for us, nurtures us, but nothing ever seems enough.

Billions of people throughout the world experience hunger every day, but over a third of produce gets thrown out before leaving the farm because it doesn’t meet aesthetic quality. Byproducts of the food industry like leather and wool are being discarded and replaced with plastic. We ask the summer to produce far more than she can, and still we throw away much of what is given.

In the past we lived with the cycles of the seasons, eating things as they were ready, storing what we could, and making every little bit count. We put value into the what we grew and raised because each thing was the product of hard work, skill, and long accumulated knowledge.

The Summer King is tired. She has been giving of herself over and over, and is beginning to realize that no matter how much she gives it will never be enough. She cannot fix everything for us, she cannot give us all that we need, not without us giving her something back.

She invites us to make the most of the things we have, to put in what effort we can to use all things to their fullest. Mend your clothing, find uses for kitchen scraps, forage sustainably, anything you can think of. By using things to their very last, we respect the effort and energy that went into producing it. She also reminds us that having the time and ability to fix things, to cook from scratch, to do the things that take that extra effort, is a privilege, one that not all of us share. But as a community, the small things add up, and we can help relieve the burden that we place upon her.

This will be my fourth Samhuinn in the community, and I am so honored to be able to share with you my vision of Summer King. I have learned so much about community and ritual from being in these spaces, and I am determined to pay it forward. With my background in veterinary medicine, and my passion for farm animal medicine specifically, agriculture and its impacts on society and the Earth are close to my heart. I hope to encourage everyone to take a look at where things come from, the processes that give us the lives we live in this modern day. We do not have to change everything drastically and immediately. We simply have to cultivate a community that respects food and objects as products of labor, that took time and effort to reach us.

Let Summer sleep.