The Historic Hedge Witch

Historically, women never moved more than a few miles from where she was born. She learned from her mother, grandmother, Aunties, and neighborhood women all the skills needed to create a beautiful productive home. If she had any home, family, or farm questions there was always an older experienced woman ready to guide her through whatever barrier needed to be overcome.

Her garden nourished her family both summer and winter through food preservation methods. She had an orchard of a variety of fruit trees, plants, and bushes that enabled her to feed her family fresh, canned, and dried fruit the whole year; she had a cellar where fresh stored foods were kept perfectly for months and months. She lived “seasonally”, and foraged for spring greens in the woods, mushrooms, herbs, and medicinal plants.

Her cow gave milk to her children and she made butter and crafted cheese that she aged in her cellar, her chickens laid eggs that she learned to “glass” as a preservation method so she had eggs during the cold dark months of winter.

Her bee hives hummed busily in summer and her children spread honey on their bread in winter. The animals that grew on summer pasture became the family’s winter protein source. Any extra food grown in summer was sold for items like salt, sugar, and fabric. She spoke protection chants over her home, cleansing chants as she cleaned, thanked each animal for its sacrifice, and placed a hedge of protection around her sweet family as they went out the door to church on Sunday. This woman was a Hedge Witch. I strive to be this Hedge Witch.

The Modern Hedge Witch

With the age of transportation, people began to move away from provincial life and the nurturing slow lifestyle of farms and hedges with farm-to-table foods filling the table. In exchange for fast food, processed foods with low nutrition, high chemical food additives, and an increase in health issues. Roll all this in with the separation of the connection we used to have with nature and our spirits become diminished by this way of life.

I tried to counteract the inner feeling of that loss of connection by doing what I could to create a connection. Looking back, I can see the things I did were a modern Hedge Witch response to the age we lived in. I was the mom who started a recycling program, I started a food co-op, where I got all my friends to order enough natural foods to have a semi-truck come to our small town every three months and deliver. I had a garden, and I canned and froze my food so my children had the best food available. When my daughter was determined to be allergic to cow’s milk I got a goat, I ended up with about 70 goats but that’s a whole other story. Organic foods became the normal fare for my family because of all the chemicals. As I researched food production and navigated my bouts with illness, I became more connected to the idea that being closer to the vine is the best choice. Mass food production practices in the United States are not intended to create health and after further research about this, I began to eat wheat-free. Being a Hedge Witch and having this connection with my own body and what I put into it has created a whole new awareness of what the world is offering and what we need to guard ourselves against.

I am blessed with being able to live in an area with a low population, have a garden, make maple syrup, and have bees, chickens, and a milk cow. It’s not always been this way. Clean eating is a Hedge Witch Way. It’s something that anyone can start on any day. It’s all about choices. Create positive habits, intentions, and rituals.

I Bless you.

Kirsten