"Here we go, a-wassailing, whatever that might mean!"

December is a strange month for chickens and for gardens.  Virtually every Texas gardener has abandoned fruits and veggies this month in favor of pansies.  Weeds for the chickens are as hard to come by as are peaches or plums for the people.

Yet, it is the time of year when every table is topped with delectable goodies, and every kitchen smells of ginger and cinnamon.

We are hosting our share of festivities at Myrtle’s place this year, and will be serving our share of sugar.  In lieu of gardening advice, or pontifications about poultry, let us offer you a serving suggestion.  Wassail is not just a word in a Christmas carol.  It is also a tasty beverage.  And it explains why, even in warm climates like ours, Santa is so jolly in spite of his heavy suit, and his nose is still a bright cherry red!

Traditionally, wassail was a hard cider warmed in a turreen full of sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and topped with pieces of toasted bread to serve as ‘sops’.  If you live somewhere with a copious quantity of sweet and tart apples, and have access to good hard cider, may we suggest you go traditional – there is absolutely nothing in the world as tasty as home grown cider spiced and warmed over a fire and drunk with a host of friends in a cozy room with windows overlooking a frozen garden.

Many of those ingredients are not available at Myrtle’s place – we would have to import the hard apple cider, we don’t have an indoor fireplace, and our garden is far from frozen.

Modern recipes for wassail, however, are somewhat forgiving, and so long as your group of friends doesn’t contain any picky purists, you can get away with calling a good old-fashioned mulled wine “wassail”.  It’ll do in a pinch, anyway.  Take a large quantity of any good sweet red wine (the cheaper, the better, in our book), toss in sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, apples, oranges, raisins, etc. to taste, maybe a splash or two of cinnamon schnapps if the mood strikes you, and heat the whole thing up.

A cauldron over a fire is a nice touch, of course, but barring that, a crock pot will suffice.  If you don’t have a crock pot, try a stew pot and your kitchen stove.

This year, we may experiment with putting in some pomegranate arils, since in future years we hope to be celebrating a fruit harvest in late fall.  We also hope to have a field of flowering quinoa as a backdrop to future wassail parties.  For this year, though, we’ll settle for a firebowl, a few flowers, and a good sit.

Winter festivals mean many different things to different folk, but one thing they all have in common is the theme of lights in the darkness, and of warmth in the midsts of cold.  We hope you can find your own island of warmth and light in the coming month.

Happy farming!