gather: Bartlemas
Watermelon-eating contests, honey hot cocoa, & beekeeping
Welcome! My name is Kristin - I’m a Pacific Northwest artist, farmer, & mom offering support for seasonal, local, liturgical living.
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For the past few years, I’ve hosted a Liturgical Life group. We’re a diverse gathering - of all ages, from a variety of denominations, learning alongside each other and working to graft the traditions of the liturgical calendar into our own varied circumstances.
We first celebrated Bartlemas - the feast of St. Bartholomew - a few years ago. It was just our little family, and it was a gorgeous, sunny day…we floated down the river, had watermelon gazpacho, bread, & honey, and the kids raced around the sunflowers to earn their gingerbread cookies. It’s a really precious memory, and one that really underscored for me the potent beauty in Ordinary Time II…this Season After Pentecost can be so much more than the time in between bigger feasts, if we look for it in the nuances of our places and our people.
Last weekend, as we celebrated Bartlemas with our Liturgical Life group (around 40 folks in attendance, ranging in age from babies to grandparents!), I was reminded of the spiraling nature of the liturgical calendar: it offers us dynamic patterns, not rote repetition. Ever ancient, ever new.
Celebrating with our community brought a fresh depth to our Bartlemas traditions - a vibrating excitement over shared experiences, curiosity-driven conversation, and friendships both old and new flourishing. Our “Barty Party” also landed on one of the rainiest days of the summer…a stark contrast to our family’s sunny-day Bartlemases from years past…and even that shift in weather brought with it a unique & memorable flavor.
We had our party in a meadow up on the farm’s wooded hillside - it’s a beautiful spot where our friends’ beehives reside. Since it was such a wet day, David parked a couple of covered hay wagons in the meadow so that we could have some shelter.
Here’s a little peek into our evening…
Bartlemas Picnic & Honey Hot Cocoa
Our pot-luck was a beautiful spread of late-summer abundance, much of it themed around connections to St. Bartholomew - roast beef, cheese boards, watermelon, honey, & more.
With Bartholomew being the patron saint of beekeepers, we were thrilled to have our beekeeper friends Peter & Amy Beth of Rainy Day Bees here to celebrate with us…and, with the weather being so volatile, they brought a real treat: their honey hot cocoa mix, which Peter stirred up fresh right there in the meadow over an outdoor cook stove.
We also had local mead for the adults to enjoy - a nod to the tradition of mead-blessing on Bartlemas!
An old-fashioned watermelon-eating contest
In Rome, St. Bartholomew’s day used to be heralded by a watermelon festival - weaving the saint’s celebration with this late-summer delicacy.
As a nod to this classic Bartlemas tradition (and my love for all old-timey things), we had a watermelon-eating contest…I was surprised & totally delighted by how excited everyone was (ya’ll, the kids’ happy screaming & cheering! I could barely eat the watermelon, I was laughing so hard!)
The littles went first, and we let them use their hands to hold the slices…but the older the brackets got, we had a no-hands rule, making the whole thing extra messy & memorable.
The winner in each group received a little jar of creamed honey from Rainy Day Bees!
Gathering around for the watermelon-eating contest was also a great opportunity for us to chat more, as a whole group, about St. Bartholomew & his feast. We’re an ecumenical group, and watching such fruitful, loving conversation happen was really incredible - covering everything from what “patronage” means, to who the Saints are, and more.
Bartlemas & Beekeeping
The patron saint of beekeepers & honeymakers, St. Bartholomew’s feast often marked the bookend to the honey harvest season.
Here on the farm, we don’t have our own beehives that we tend - but, as I mentioned above, we’re fortunate to have a couple of dear friends who have kept their hives here (and in a plethora of other locales!) for years. Peter & Amy Beth are so passionate & knowledgeable about bees, and they’re also kindred spirits who love the liturgical. We can’t thank them enough for their generosity!
It was a real joy & privilege to get to celebrate their work right on Bartlemas, and they shared a fascinating talk about beekeeping with us all - I could listen to them chat about bees forever! We all got to peruse a bee frame, seeing first-hand an old queen-cell, touching the propolis, marveling over the perfectly hexagonal honeycomb.
(A few bonuses of the rainy weather: 1) the bees were calm and generally hanging out right near their hives, 2) talk about PERFECT thematic matching with Peter & Amy Beth’s Rainy Day Bees logo!)
Barty bee-waterers
Our crafting souvenir was a fun one that might not be very applicable to this unusually-wet August, but it will be a boon for local bees when hot weather arrives again next summer: we made Mason-jar bee waterers! Honeybees rely on water during the hot summer months - not just for hydration and honey-making, but also for cooling their hives. If they can’t find a consistent supply nearby, they’ll congregate wherever they can…which can often lead to lots of bee-stings or drowned bees.
I set up a table with options for everyone to build their own waterers, and they’re really quite simple!
Supplies:
Terracotta saucer
Pebbles & stones
Mason jar (I used regular-mouth pints)
BPA-free plastic lids (I pre-drilled holes in them)
Assembly:
Spread some pebbles over the saucer (the stones provide safe perches for the bees to sit on, so they don’t drown)
Fill a Mason jar up with plain water (important: do not use sugar water! They just need plain water…and they don’t mind if it gets smelly)
Put a lid on with a few small holes drilled in it
Quickly turn the jar upside-down and place (lid-side down) on the pebbles
Voila: an automatic-filling bee waterer!
It’s a simple, fun, practical way to blend memories of St. Bartholomew with your own ecosystem, all the while helping to support your pollinators.
Benediction
Dull walls of clay my Spirit leaves,
And in a foreign Kingdom doth appear,
This great Apostle it receives,
Admires His works and sees them, standing here,
Within myself from East to West I move
As if I were
At once a Cherubim and Sphere,
Or was at once above
And here.Thomas Traherne, excerpt from An Hymn Upon St. Bartholomew’s Day (17th c.)
The traditions of the liturgical calendar invite us into the story of Christ through all our senses, right in the varied landscapes & communities in which we find ourselves - and my hope is that, for the folks we celebrated with last weekend, Bartlemas tastes like honey and watermelon, bears with it the sound of kids cheering and bees buzzing, adorned by sunflowers…and refreshed with a dose of classic PNW rain.
Friends, thank you so much for your grace this summer as I’ve slowed down online in order to really savor this full season in our farm & family life.
I’ve been working on some really lovely art & resources to share with you, & I’m excited to step into a new, fresh rhythm this fall alongside you.
More about that shortly…but in the meantime, as always, paid subscribers can access my whole library of printables in the Scriptorium (peek ahead for September goodies!)
Bartlemas feels a bit like a fulcrum that tips us into the fall months here. I’d love to hear about this time in your own landscape & life - does it feel like fall yet?
Pax et bonum,
Kristin
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For more reflections and perspectives on the liturgical year, please visit Signs + Seasons: a liturgical living guild!
Ahhhh! So good ✨ and the bees!
Oh these traditions are so wonderful, thanks for sharing them Kirstin!