For this iteration of the Nature of Community, one thing is certain; arranging outdoor activities in late Autumn, early Winter is a risk. We couldn’t meet outside due to a wind storm (they have been repetitive during all gathers at Hawbush Community Gardens) which moved us indoors.

Four of us gathered in the community centre at Hawbush Community Gardens rather than the roundhouse. It felt right — intimate, close, a small table with a camp stove and a squash.

This was Session 1 of Food Stories.

The following is transcribed and rewritten from recorded conversations.

The Theme: Squash

We started with pumpkins because, as one of us put it, everyone's got a story about pumpkins.

Growing up, pumpkins were too expensive and nobody liked them anyway. So Halloween meant carving a swede. A brother remembered nothing of it until he was reminded — and then suddenly he remembered how his hands hurt. The resistance of the flesh. The effort of it.

It turns out that's closer to the original tradition anyway.

Jack-o'-Lanterns

There's a man called Jack in Irish folklore. He was nasty. He made deals with the devil, then kept going back on what he'd agreed. When he died, he couldn't get into heaven. He went to hell and the devil said no — you've double-crossed me — and sent him back with nothing but a piece of coal to light his way. He carved out a turnip and carried the coal inside it. That's where the jack-o'-lantern comes from.

When Irish people migrated to the Americas, turnips weren't native. Pumpkins were. So the carving carried on in a different fruit.

"So actually, from looking at this, I did find out that my cutting up of a swede was probably a lot closer to the original."

This led us to Greek mythology — Sisyphus, Orpheus, Persephone — to the Brothers Grimm, to the way folk stories get written down in one version and we forget all the others that existed before. There's a podcast about a woman whose job it is to take folk and fairy tales back to communities and open them up again — to remember that before they were fixed, they were living, shifting things.

We talked about Red Riding Hood. A version one of us was given by someone she was caring for — an older book, not the one we know — where it's not a girl in a red hood at all but sheep in a house, and the wolf eats the lambs, and the mother sheep cuts the wolf open and replaces her babies with stones, then sews him back up. "I didn't read this to the kids. I got home and opened it and I was like, I'm not reading this."

And then the connection to Cronos — who kept eating his children because of the prophecy that they'd overthrow him, until his partner gave him a rock instead and hid the baby away. That baby became Zeus.

"Replacing the child with a rock — it keeps coming up."

Halloween, Paganism, and Fear

"The way they package Halloween as a holiday is so nothing to do with its origins. It was always about celebrating the last harvest and venerating your ancestors. Now it's just ghosts and horror films."

We talked about how much of what Halloween became was a Christian project — demonising pagan practice, building the church on the pagan hill, turning the celebration of the other world into something fearful. The witch, the hex, the deep dark woods: fear of the outside.

The same thing happens with fairy tales — the fear and horror added in as the stories became more about control than about the body being magical.

"The cause of suffering is refusing to accept that we're going to die. You see it in the wars that are happening now. It's almost like the projection of a fear of death creates consistent, unnecessary death."

The Three Sisters

Corn, beans, and squash planted together. The beans fix nitrogen in the soil. The squash spreads out as a living mulch, keeping weeds down. The corn grows tall. They support each other.

One of us had tried it this year — squash and corn together, beans in a separate bed. The corn didn't amount to much. The beans went crispy and brown. Next year: all three in the same bed.

"I love that it's called The Three Sisters. It just animates the food into these beings, these three siblings who work together to produce food for us."

She grew three big pumpkins this year on a brownfield site — beds built from reclaimed wood, manure collected from a friend's mum's horses. On a Wednesday with her sons, they carried the pumpkins in from the garden, drew on them with pen, and then she got out a knife and taught her son Gabriel how to carve. Elijah did the same. They scooped the seeds out and saved some in a little container to plant.

"When their dad came to pick them up, they had these ready-made lanterns that they took with them. And I made pumpkin soup — roasted with shallots, leftover carrots, smoked paprika, ground ginger, loads of salt and pepper and olive oil, then whizzed with stock. It lasted three days."

The soup went on a trip away. The lanterns went to their dad's. "Even though I wasn't with my kids, I was still with them."

"It doesn't feel like a transaction at all. It just feels like an extension of me. The vines almost become like this metaphor of the invisible connections — making the soup, eating the soup with my kids, the jack-o'-lanterns, taking the seeds to plant next year. It all started with three pumpkins in the back garden."

Seeds and Lineage

We saved seeds from the pumpkins.

"I imagine myself in my 70s, saying to my grandchildren: these aren't any old seeds. These are seeds that me and your dad have collected. They've travelled with us."

We talked about seed libraries and seed swaps. About Vandana Shiva and the documentary that made clear: whoever controls the seeds controls the world. About rocket left to go to seed on one side of the bed, so next year's is already waiting.

And about a friend's garden where pumpkins appeared as if by magic — until much later she admitted she'd thrown old pumpkins to the bottom of the garden for the hedgehogs. "I thought some rival had come and planted them in her garden."

Ceremony and Food

One of us had recently been on a course in Dartmoor — a week living with others around deer that had been hunted. They learned to butcher them properly so there was no waste. They cooked around the fire every night. On the last day they dug a pit, heated stones, placed the meat on top, covered it with grass, and cooked it underground for six hours.

"It felt like I was remembering something pretty ancient. That's the only explanation I can give for why it all felt so natural — as someone who'd been veggie for 15 years, suddenly cutting up and cooking and eating deer just felt completely natural. And I think a lot of that was to do with the community we'd made around honouring that animal."

They made rattles from the bones. Nothing was wasted.

This led to a conversation about gratitude before eating — how rare it is now to pause before a meal. Christmas dinner with wild boar, and everyone just started eating before anyone had sat down. "I just ended up looking at her — she'd already had a mouthful."

Breaking bread as peace. In Greek tradition, in Celtic tradition — you feed a stranger before you ask them anything. No questions until you've eaten together.

"If you go somewhere and break bread, it means peace. Basic hospitality. And it works all the way, doesn't it? If someone's been to your house and you've fed them — if they're later unkind — it feels more personal. They were welcome at my table."

Farming and Food Systems

A conversation about the food that makes it to our plates — how little of it we actually grow in this country, how underpaid the people who pick it are. A dairy farmer that weekend had said they'd lost 5p on a pint of milk in two weeks and there was nothing to be done about it.

"Farmers should just be paid based on a living wage. How many people does it take? What does it cost to feed the animals, pay the mortgage? Then that's what the product is worth. And that's just what it's worth."

We talked about what would have to change for us to eat locally and seasonally — and the reality that we don't actually produce enough food in this country to feed ourselves, even if we kept everything we export. No one at the food resilience talk at Green Gathering had a solution.

The guilt of knowing organic is better for your kids but not being able to afford it. The gap between the ideal and the lived reality. The fact that that gap exists, and we're still here, doing what we can.

"I just think we don't really know what the balance is. It needs to be a change. But in order for it to change, we need to be able to see what the benefit is going to be."

The Nature of This Community

Toward the end of the session we talked about what makes this place a community.

"What makes it a community is that everyone does something. And whatever that is — just talking, listening, physically doing things — it counts. I've had times when I've come and not had the spoons to touch the earth. I've just gone and sat and had a coffee and listened. And that has filled my cup. And then there are days when I come early and help set things up. I notice that with everybody."

Invisible labour: the invitations sent out to florists, cafes, the market in Brierley Hill. The funding bids. The governance. The person who shared the session link in the group chat so someone else didn't have to.

"Invitation is an invisible labour. Because it's hard to invite yourself."

The spaceholders need tending too. Showing up when life is hard and still having a thing to do because you care about the people who are coming. Knowing it's also okay not to be 100% when you arrive.

"Every village needs a bard."

Gratitude

We went around.

"I'm grateful for the intimacy of a small group today. The safety of it is what I needed."

"I'm grateful for the connections. And for this food, made with love."

"Crafting and community and eating together. This is what life is."

"I'm grateful for all of you just being consistent. Showing up. There's something about cooking together, all the little layers of us shifting and moving — some peeling, some chopping, some melting the butter — to make this one bowl of food. That is the nature of community. It started with squash. And the squash is now squashed in this bowl, with the back of a spoon, on a little camp stove. We don't need the fancy equipment. We just need this."

Invitation to eat. Invitation to cook. Invitation to share. Invitation to speak. Invitation not to. Invitation to be.