The year on the ridge turns through eight points. Four are set by the sun: the two solstices and the two equinoxes. Four fall roughly between them and are set by the work of the land. The names are northern ones; other traditions keep the same eight under other names.

The eight turnings

Turning	Around	The sky	What the homestead does
Yule	21 Dec	longest night	rest, repair, take stock of the larder
Disting	early Feb	light returning	seed orders, tool sharpening, first plans
Ostara	20 Mar	day equals night	seed starting indoors, soil waking
Walpurgis	30 Apr	warming nights	beds prepared, flock out on fresh ground
Midsummer	21 Jun	longest day	growth, watering, feeding the soil
Freyfaxi	1 Aug	first harvest	first cutting, preserving, giving thanks
Winter Finding	22 Sep	night equals day	harvest in, accounts squared, winter begins
Winter Nights	mid-Oct	dark gaining	honour the ancestors, finish the harvest, close up

The Wheel of the Year page draws these as a circle with a hand that points to today, and gathers every dispatch under its season.

Why the sun sets four of the dates

The solstices and equinoxes are not tradition; they are geometry. At this latitude, a little under 42 degrees north, the day runs from about 9 hours at Yule to about 15 hours at Midsummer. The equinoxes are the two points where the gain or loss is fastest: in late September the ridge loses about two and a half minutes of daylight a day. You feel that in the garden before you see it on a calendar.

Why the land sets the other four

The cross-quarter days follow the work, and the work follows the weather, so the lodge keeps them loosely:

• Disting is when the light is clearly back but nothing grows. It is for planning.
• Walpurgis is when frost risk drops enough to trust the beds.
• Freyfaxi is the first real harvest, whatever the date says.
• Winter Nights comes with the first hard frosts. The ancestors are honoured when the harvest is in.

Keeping a turning

A turning does not need a grand rite. The lodge’s habit is:

1. Measure it. Sunrise, sunset, day length, the moon, the first frost or the last. The measure boxes at the top of the dispatches come from this.
2. Name what changed. In the garden, the flock, the house, the work.
3. Close what belongs to the season ending. Harvest in, accounts squared, the stale task closed and marked as stale.
4. Give thanks and make an offering: a cup poured out for the land-wights, a candle, a meal shared.
5. Write it down. The dispatches are the lodge’s record of the wheel actually turning, year over year.

The moon inside the wheel

The moon keeps a faster rhythm inside the year’s: about 29.5 days from new to new. The lodge notes its phase in each measure box and on the home page, worked out from a known new moon and the length of the month. Full moons get their old names (the Harvest Moon is the full moon nearest Winter Finding), and a waning moon is a good season for clearing out.