Here at Great House Farm Stores we believe in two kinds of seasonal living and have discovered the fruit of letting both shape our lifestyles.
Firstly, we believe in embracing the natural seasons. From how we eat to what we drink, we try and let an awareness of the current season inform what we buy and what goes onto our plate as much as possible.
Secondly, we believe in embracing the different seasons of life. Depending on your faith or spirituality this can happen in lots of different ways. It might be that you’ve recognised you’ve come through a challenging few months and that your next season needs to be one of self care? It might be that you trust your gut or intuition and let that guide what sort of plans you make for the weeks ahead? Or it might be that you follow an ancient practice, like Ayurveda for example, or tune into divine wisdom and let that craft an awareness of the seasons of life.
For us, an embracing of the seasons of life means recognising the season we’re in and responding to it by changing how we spend our time, what we spend our money on and what we plan to achieve. A season marked by grief, for example, needs to be walked out very differently to one marked by adventure.
Our candle ranges reflect both aspects of this seasonal living. Our Seasons range captures and celebrates each natural season. We write a new original scent recipe for every season, unique that year, to help you embrace the best of creation for those months.
Our Seasons of Life and Aromatherapy range are both designed to help you navigate through whatever season of life you’re in. A season of grief might best be accompanied by our Heal candle for example. While a season of adventure can be partnered by our Explore candle.
We’ve put together a few tips, gathered from our own learning journey on how to embrace seasonal living in 2022.
Introduce more greenery and plant life to your home
As far as new year’s resolutions go, this is one the loveliest we can think of. Any excuse to indulge in flowers and plants is fine by us! Filling your home with plant life has endless benefits for your mental health and we love how it increases our awareness of the seasons too.
Try buying a few house plants that change noticeably throughout the year, a Peace Lily for example or an Easter Cactus. It’s only a subtle change but watching the plants grow and blossom throughout the year will help you mark the shift in seasons.
Treating yourself to a bouquet of flowers every month or so is a gorgeous act of self care and we love that, if you limit yourself to buying British blooms, it also brings a direct reflection of the current season into your home. You’ll find bouquets filled with sweet peas in June shift into autumnal arrangements filled with pussy willow come October. So, rather than always opting for your favourite bloom or buying whatever’s on offer, make a deliberate choice to fill your vases with whatever’s in season. You may even fall in love with a new bloom or two in the process.
Try a new seasonal vegetable
Now this one sounds obvious but it’s amazing the impact adding a little seasonal eating to your plate can have. We grow our own veg here on the farm but we also treat ourselves to the occasional veg box from Riverford. If you select British only veg from your local veg box supplier then you’ll get a delicious curation of what’s in season at that time. It’s an incredible way to widen your culinary repertoire, eat with the environment in mind and help your body and digestion follow the natural rhythms of our planet.
Spend time journalling
Journalling is a brilliant way of introducing some mindfulness and reflection into your daily disciplines.
Keeping a journal doesn’t have to take up lots of time, you don’t even have to do it every day. Start simple with an exercise like noting down three things you’re grateful for every day before going to sleep. Or, jot down your peak and your trough of that day. Engaging in this sort of reflective activity will help you identify, and then partner with, the season of life you’re in.
Introduce a non-negotiable down time
We don’t need to tell you about the benefits of switching off from technology and letting yourself disconnect for a while. The trick is in making a habit of it and letting its benefits flood into your life no matter how busy or overwhelmed you get. For the last 6 months of 2021 we introduced a Sabbath of sorts into our rhythm here at the farm. From Saturday night until Sunday night we leave our phones upstairs, we focus on cooking and eating feasts together and we only allow tasks and jobs that feel fruitful and bring us joy. Some weeks, when our todo lists loom, it’s incredibly difficult to stick to our new Sabbath discipline! But, the impact of this regular non-negotiable down time has been huge.
We’ve noticed that taking the time to disconnect from technology and connect instead with family and with nature has increased our creative thinking, improved our sleep (we have more of those really deep sleeps with lots of dreams in - magical) and helped us recognise how we’re really feeling; physically and emotionally.
A weekly down-tools might not be possible but maybe could you try monthly? Or cut it down to one hour on a weekend morning? We’ll be continuing our weekend switch offs into 2022 and hope to only expand, not reduce, our time spent dreaming and creating.