We are the food

A Currawong calls and the resident Magpies gurwurdle as we set up the tables and stalls for this year’s CERES Harvest Festival. 

From ten through until three people stream into the park, their shining faces reminding us how much we love this day.

Up in Honey Lane Farm a gloriously scruffy crowd of scarecrows are emerging from the garden beds.

In workshops seeds are planted, bees discovered, indigo made and cloth dyed.

At the marketplace giant vegetables, cakes and jams are shown off and awarded prizes.

Hungry people line up at Niro’s Tuka Tuka KothuRoti Man stall for plates of masala dosa. 

And down on the Village Green kids and adults are dancing on the grass while the band plays.

Up above the gusty Autumn wind blows through the leaves of tall Mannas and River Red gums while the Ravens eye off the scraps they’ll be feasting on later.
 
At the end of the day I gobble down some egg kothuroti while my colleague Sieta reminds me with a wicked laugh that we eat the food and then we are the food.

Harvest is CERES’ annual nudge to the humans of Melbourne that the cycle of life includes us too. 

Despite having more data at our fingertips than anytime in history for some reason I keep forgetting this simple truth.

The daily vortex of work and parenting spins my head in smaller and smaller circles and in the evening a soothing abundance of content, comfy couch, chocolate and wine numbs everything down.
 
In quiet moments though a feeling seeps through; a wisp of memory, of something more, of something missing.

And in these pauses the rhythm of sunrises and sunsets, moon’s wax and wane, fall of leaves, return of birds, sprout of seed rock me back and forth and help me remember… I eat the food. I am the food.

Have a great week

Chris