From Foraging to Farming: A Harvest Hallow Adventure
A Visit to Harvest Hallow
Chewz Journal • Harvest Hallow
The road into Harvest Hallow was busier than I remembered. Wagons rattled past carrying baskets of apples, pumpkins and grain. Somewhere ahead, music drifted through the trees, and every person I passed seemed to be heading in the same direction. The Harvest Festival was almost here. I had barely reached the edge of the village when Brielle appeared.
“
You’re just in time,” she said.
“For the festival?”
She smiled. “Eventually.”
That should have been my first clue.
Instead of leading us toward the lights and market stalls, Brielle turned down a narrow path leading away from Harvest Hallow.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To find out why there’s a festival in the first place.” She said.
And with that, my students and I followed her down the old road.
Before There Were Fields
The farther we walked, the more Harvest Hallow disappeared behind us. No orchards. No barns. No overflowing market stalls. Just wilderness.
Brielle divided us into small family groups. “Imagine there are no farms, no grocery stores and no Harvest Hallow,” she said. “Everything your family eats today has to be found.”
Scattered across the land were small pieces representing wild food. The challenge sounded simple: Gather enough food for your family to survive. Everyone hurried off.
Some gathered everything they could find. Others were more selective. A few were so busy searching that they hardly noticed what the other families were doing.
Then Brielle called us back. It was time to count. Each family needed 30 food units to survive the day. Some had enough. Some didn't.
Harvest Hallow Challenge
Then Brielle Gave Us the Bad News The next morning, there was nothing left.
We had gathered what we could from this part of the wilderness. If our families wanted to eat again, we would have to pack our belongings and move somewhere new.
So off we went.
But this time, Brielle wasn't finished with us.
Partway through the search, one member of each family was injured. Two others had to stop gathering to help. Three people gone from the search. And our families still needed the same amount of food.
We searched again. Then we counted. The difference was hard to miss. When so much of a community's time and energy goes toward finding enough food to survive, one injury, one poor search or one depleted area can change everything.
The Question on the Old Road
By then, nobody seemed quite as concerned about getting to the festival. We had another problem to solve. What could make our food supply more reliable?
We talked about moving from place to place. About carrying only what we could take with us. About how difficult it would be to build permanent homes or store large amounts of food if we never knew where we would need to go next.
And then Brielle reached into her pocket. She placed something tiny in my hand.
A seed.
“That,” she said, “might change everything.”
I looked back toward Harvest Hallow. Somewhere beyond the hill were fields filled with crops, barns storing food and a village preparing for a festival celebrating the harvest.
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