Witching Hour Farm & Folklore

Witching Hour Farm & Folklore Farm & Folklore

Happy New Moon in Aries—our first new moon of the astrological year.May we remain rooted, open, and undomesticated.🖤
04/17/2026

Happy New Moon in Aries—our first new moon of the astrological year.

May we remain rooted, open, and undomesticated.

🖤

Happy National Dandelion Day!This year I took the opportunity to share in the celebration with my colleagues at The Lloy...
04/05/2026

Happy National Dandelion Day!

This year I took the opportunity to share in the celebration with my colleagues at The Lloyd Library & Museum and whip up a batch of Dandy Blend lattes.

The timing was perfect. I have some herbal “homework” to complete this week for an apprenticeship I’m honored to be a part of with the incredible and Jane Bothwell AND has been made right here in Ohio since the 1990s by the “King of Dandelions”, botanist Peter Gail and his family.

The lattes were gratefully received and enjoyed and it was a fantastic opportunity for all of us at The Lloyd to interact with a beloved plant we see in vibrant illustration and text so frequently in a new way!

🖼️ Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen in Naturgetreuen Abbildungen mit Kurz Erläuterndem Texte (1883-1914) by Hermann Köhler courtesy of

I usually choose a single word to guide my year. Something I arrive at around the astrological new year or Aries new moo...
04/04/2026

I usually choose a single word to guide my year. Something I arrive at around the astrological new year or Aries new moon, toward the first spark of becoming.

But this year refused that kind of simplicity.

Not even just in my own life, but collectively. I’m sensing that we are all standing in something unsettled, something still rearranging itself beneath our feet. A single word felt far too resolved.

So instead, I’ve been sitting inside a constellation of ideas.

Tairseach:
the threshold where change actually occurs as lived crossing.

Dúchas:
a deeper belonging, the kind that roots you in relationship rather than identity.

And, perhaps my favorite part, the question of wildness:
the untamed that remains intact in you, what refuses to be put in a box, what keeps you in contact with something larger than yourself.

An entire landscape to stand in while things shift.

This is the ground this latest bit comes from. Proximity to change and a willingness to stay within the threshold long enough to feel the discomfort and gifts of change.

🔗 in B l O

Hope the gifts of change are finding you as the season continues to shift and brighter days still lie ahead.

They’re lovely in this photo, but this used to be a field of spring beauties and violets just outside my little cabin. A...
03/24/2026

They’re lovely in this photo, but this used to be a field of spring beauties and violets just outside my little cabin. As I was reflecting on the duality of the beauty of this lesser celandine and her complete decimation of two of my most beloved spring natives I thought—I’ll bet the moon is in Gemini today.

Sure enough.

Big thanks to the universe for holding space for multiple truths and the rambling ways my mind works.

The spring equinox is often treated like the start of a race.Begin again! Grow! Bloom!And while I do love the promise of...
03/20/2026

The spring equinox is often treated like the start of a race.

Begin again! Grow! Bloom!

And while I do love the promise of that, and all spring later brings, the forest tells a different story.

Spring begins slowly—with nettles pushing through cold soil, violets softening the ground, and sap rising long before the leaves appear on our most beloved trees.

Read a small equinox tale about this quieter beginning.

The Awakening of the Vernal Ash is now on Substack.

A loving reminder that growth that lasts begins and builds slowly, beneath the surface.

On this International Women’s Day, I’m thinking about the stories we tell about powerful women.One of my favorite benevo...
03/08/2026

On this International Women’s Day, I’m thinking about the stories we tell about powerful women.

One of my favorite benevolent-healer-turned-malicious-sorceress stories is the story of Morgan le Fay.

In early Arthurian legend, Morgan le Fay was a beautiful healer of Avalon who was skilled in herbs, astronomy, and shape shifting. But centuries later her story was rewritten by religious authors who transformed her into a dangerous sorceress…

More about Morgan le Fay on Substack. 🔗 in B I O

Stories don’t just entertain us. They reflect power, fear, and cultural anxieties about who is allowed to hold knowledge and agency. Sometimes reclaiming truth doesn’t require inventing a new story—it simply requires looking more closely at the one we’ve been given.

Image: Frederick Augustus Sandys, Morgan le Fay, 1864, oil on wood panel, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, England

Catnip | Nepeta catariaSpud is helping me clear some of the garden this morning while it’s warm before another round of ...
03/07/2026

Catnip | Nepeta cataria

Spud is helping me clear some of the garden this morning while it’s warm before another round of rain moves through in a few hours. This means he gets first dibs on the fresh catnip that’s just started to emerge from its winter slumber.

I love to use catnip fresh or dried in tea to aid in calm or sleep, Spud kinda prefers to just roll around in it.

Regardless of our differences in use preference, we’re both glad to welcome her back to Witching Hour.

Last fall was a season of storytelling. I had the good fortune to tell tales in person in front of crackling fires and r...
02/28/2026

Last fall was a season of storytelling. I had the good fortune to tell tales in person in front of crackling fires and rushing waterways surrounded by active listeners in the wild.

Although I already know the power of storytelling, an occasional reminder still serves me quite well. One of my favorite parts of this season of storytelling was the reaction of some young listeners at a event.

My stories are typically structured with the hope of reminding fully grown folks about the joy of nature and story and our connection to one another in this great web of life, knowing that they will make up the vast majority of the audience.

So imagine my surprise when, at the conclusion of my share, a group of children lined up to ask if they could hug me 🥹

Stories are for everyone, but let us not forget where that love originated. I like to think that on that day a much smaller version of myself was among the group ready to thank a storyteller with the gratitude of a warm embrace.

Stories matter most when the world is on fire. Not as escape, but as a way to remember who we are. A story helps us make meaning when everything feels senseless. It carries memory. It keeps us connected. It reminds us that this moment isn’t the whole story, and that other ways of living are still possible.

The Ecology of Resilience series began with disturbance — with the ways wellness culture misunderstands both bodies and ...
02/22/2026

The Ecology of Resilience series began with disturbance — with the ways wellness culture misunderstands both bodies and ecosystems.

Much of it was shaped by a recent flare and written from bed over the course of just a few days, where these ecological theories felt far less abstract.

The series moved through collapse and reorganization as processes rather than personal failures.

This final essay lingers in that reorganization phase, tracing what grows first after rupture and what kinds of conditions allow it to take root.

Read Pioneer Species and the Luxury of Not Knowing at the 🔗 in stories or b l o.

Thanks for going on this lil journey with me.

Creators tagged in each image when possible.

Today the air smelled like wet soil and the sun was shining on my sleeping lavender plant in the most perfect way.I thin...
02/21/2026

Today the air smelled like wet soil and the sun was shining on my sleeping lavender plant in the most perfect way.

I think I’m gonna make it after all.

When I closed my brick-and-mortar apothecary at the end of 2022, I didn’t fully understand how deep my burnout ran. I on...
02/08/2026

When I closed my brick-and-mortar apothecary at the end of 2022, I didn’t fully understand how deep my burnout ran. I only knew that my body needed a change of scenery. What followed were two years of grief, intense fatigue, and worsening chronic illness symptoms, as the consequences of pushing past my limits finally caught up with me.

My vision was clear, but the cost of bringing it into form was not. The transition asked me to reckon with the stories I had internalized about identity, productivity, and health—stories that framed endurance as virtue and collapse as personal failure.

I gave myself time and space to experiment, to follow threads rather than plans. And the thing is, that s**t really worked.

Now you might be saying to yourself, well yeah, if I didn’t work and could just focus on following my heart I’d feel a hell of a lot better too, but I DID work. I still had to survive. I actually worked a ton. I even won a whole ass Emmy award as a producer in 2023.

And I lived happily ever after.

Just kidding. My clarity came with a double edge. I was right to trust my intuition, the change was necessary. My mind, body, and spirit needed the flexibility that freelance life offered. But flexibility without stability is its own kind of precarity—especially as a single parent, especially with an invisible illness, especially under late-stage capitalism. That whole socioeconomic status thing and those social determiners of health really come into play here.

Care, it turns out, is not something you can will into existence through insight alone.

Eventually, I found what once felt like an impossible thing: A regular-ass job I genuinely love. It also happens to be full-time, in an office. Which means many of the challenges I thought I had left behind are now resurfacing in a different ecosystem, asking different questions of my body, my time, and my capacity.

Care Is an Ecosystem emerges from this tension. It is not a solution or a blueprint because I don’t have either. It is an acknowledgment of what I do know: that care is relational, contextual, and contingent, and that no single structure can hold it all without cost.

I hope you’ll explore with me.

Imbolc/Snow MoonThe stars really did align on this one.Typically I aim to spend at least a portion of my day outside on ...
02/02/2026

Imbolc/Snow Moon

The stars really did align on this one.

Typically I aim to spend at least a portion of my day outside on Imbolc, looking for signs of a change in seasons as the promise of spring arrives.

This year Imbolc happened to fall at nearly the same time as the full moon in Leo, also sometimes referred to as the snow moon. True to its name, this year there is a thick blanket of snow in all the places I would normally hope to find the first green shoots of a purple hyacinth, yellow crocus, or a white hellebore poking up through the cold ground.

Imbolc doesn’t mark the arrival of spring, but its promise. I may not be able to see the hyacinth, crocus, or hellebore, but I know they are there, resting beneath their thick white blankets. I’m resting in the hope that change is coming, that spring is coming.

It’s a really difficult time to trust what can’t yet be seen, in the world as much as in the soil.

It’s been easy for me to find myself feeling more cynical lately because of… *gestures broadly*

And while I doubt it means I’m going to be any quieter in response to all that is going on right now, the arrival of Imbolc has reminded me that I can also choose joy as an act of resistance.

I am continually inspired and humbled by the world around me and that is precisely why I believe it’s worth fighting for.

I will plant and nurture the seeds of change with care and intention.

Address

Bethel, OH

Telephone

+15133848286

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Witching Hour Farm & Folklore posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Practice

Send a message to Witching Hour Farm & Folklore:

Shortcuts

Share

Category