Cross Quarter Club: Midwinter Gathering Recap
In 2022, I started a seasonal living club for women here in York, Pennsylvania. We gather together four times per year: at midwinter, mid-spring, midsummer and mid-autumn, to work on a project that connects us to earth and season. Each gathering is an invitation to pause and deepen into the season we’re in, try your hand at something new and come together with other like-minded folks. I’ve been longing for this type of community, so I decided to create it myself!
Our first gathering was held on Sunday, January 30th at John Rudy Park in York, Pennsylvania. It was such a treat to spend a chilly winter afternoon sipping cider and sharing/sowing seeds by a roaring fire. Read on for the full recap!
Seed swap
When everyone arrived at the pavilion, I had a table designated for the seed swap with bins for herbs, vegetables, perennial flowers and annual flowers. Each person placed their extra seeds into the appropriate bin and looked through what was already there to find some new varieties to take home.
Winter sowing tutorial
Next, I led a quick tutorial on using empty gallon jugs to make mini greenhouses for starting seeds. The best part of this seed starting method is that after planting (here in zone 7 at least), our jugs can be left outside all winter where rain and snow will do the watering for us. In late April/early May, we can open them up and have seedlings ready to plant out into your garden! I provided all the materials for this project, attendees could either bring seeds they wanted to grow or use some from the swap.
Read my post: Winter Sowing in Milk Jugs
After we finished our winter sowing project, we gathered around the fire with blankets, sipping hot apple cider and snacking on maple-cardamom glazed scones I made for the inaugural, winter issue of my Midseason Journal, which may or may have not frozen rock hard in the cold...
We also saved the clementine peels to be used for homemade citrus-infused vinegar cleaning spray — another DIY from the winter Midseason Journal! You can read that post, here.
It takes a special kind of person to rsvp yes to an outdoor gardening workshop in January and I am so thankful for the women who came to the first ever meeting of the Cross Quarter Club! Despite the freezing temperatures, we had a wonderfully cozy afternoon, filled with excitement for the coming gardening year and conversations about plants, parenthood and life. A few new friendships were forged that day! The Midwinter Gathering really was everything I dreamed it would be!
Does this sound like your kind of club?
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