Feast in the Forest

Thanksgiving in The Hollow

By Bri Vos

November 4^th, 2017

Every year (with few exceptions) my husband Patrick and I head out to his family farm in Ontario for Thanksgiving. The farm rests on the south edge of the Canadian Shield. The landscape of the farm moves from small rolling fields of hay into brush and rocks and into a thick forest of mostly maple, elm and oak.

The farmhouse Patrick grew up in is the same house the past five generations of his family have grown up in. The road the farm sits on bears the family name. On the other side of the forest, his father's brother built a house and now trails snake through the trees from one back door to another. Take a wrong turn and you might find yourself at the now disused sugar shack where the family boiled down maple syrup for generations.

Roughly halfway between the houses there's a clearing with a wide, rustic table and three fire pits resting under the boughs of three sprawling oak trees. A little ways back in the woods Patrick's cousin, a skilled heritage builder, put up an outhouse complete with red siding and flourishes around the door frame.

The souped up golf carts came later. When Patrick's grandfather Gerald got sick, he became less mobile and less able to farm like he used to. He started having small incidents with the tractors and other farming equipment. So Patrick's uncle did some work in trade for a few golf carts and got him set up on something a bit smaller, a bit slower, a bit less dangerous. Gerald's sons set to clearing new and widening existing forest paths to accommodate a golf cart and make a trail; the "Gerry trail".

Though Gerald has past, those trails are still maintained. The forest is still well loved. Still used for walking the dog on summer evenings, for fuel for wood burning furnaces, for Christmas trees and for the annual thanksgiving Feast in the Forest.

It starts as soon as we're up. An oven schedule. How to get the sweet potatoes roasted, the bread baked and the turkey cooked all before we head out into the trees?

Timing.

Around noon Patrick, his brother and cousin head out into the forest, ripping down the paths on souped up golf carts and a finicky dirt bike. They bring an axe and a case of beer. After all, chopping the wood, starting and maintaining the fires and topping up the torches is thirsty work.

Slowly others begin to join, arms full of things that can't be found in the forest: a load of toiletries for the outhouse, centrepiece flowers and a tablecloth, cosy blankets, coolers full of drinks, dishes of food that begin to fill the grill hung above the fire keeping warm until mealtime.

By 4pm, pretty much everyone has arrived. Though not all related by blood, it has always seemed (to me) like an extended family: brothers of aunts, cousins of cousins, sisters of in-laws. We swarm around the table. There are always doubles of turkey, stuffing and sweet potatoes. There are Brussels sprouts and potatoes, meatballs and fresh bread, doughnuts and squares, hot cider and cold Ontario craft beer.

Fires crackling, sun dropping, we eat until we're full. Overfull. We catch up on each other's lives: new babies, new jobs, new houses. Out of the growing dark more family arrives to sit around the fire with a beer. The toddlers run out of steam and cuddle into their grandparent's laps. The older kids wear headlights and play hide and seek in the shadows. The adults open another beer, pour another glass of wine.

Slowly we head home in small groups along the lighted path after saying our goodnights. The fires die down and the food that remains gets carted away back home. Some things will stay though, the priority tonight is community, not cleaning.

The next morning we have our coffees and our teas and talk about heading back into the forest to gather what was left behind. This year, after a cool and rainy summer, the autumn weather turned warm was perfect for walking through the fields back into the trees.

We pick up acorns along the way and talk about upcoming weddings. We collect a cooler with a couple of still cold cans inside. We share them around and put some music on while we stack chairs.