The Joyful Almanac - October
Chapter Ten: The Last Calm Month
We are in the 'ber months now.
September, October, November, December - the four months whose names end in -ber, whose Latin roots whisper seven, eight, nine, ten, the ancient calendar still visible beneath the modern one like pencil marks under paint. The year in its final chapter. The home straight. And October is the 'ber month that still has warmth in it, the one that hasn't fully committed to winter yet, the one that lets you believe, on a good afternoon, that there might be a little more of everything before it's done.
I love October for this. The holding of two things simultaneously, the last of the warm and the first of the cold, the tail of the light and the beginning of the dark, without it feeling like loss. It feels like arrival. Like the year finally being what it's been building towards.
The attic has been visited. The waterproofs and jumpers have been retrieved and assessed. The baskets by the front door have been emptied of sandals and filled with hats and gloves and the things October actually needs. The slippers have been found at the back of the cupboard and immediately put on, producing an audible exhale that I will not be embarrassed about.
The fire has been lit properly. Not for ambiance. For actual warmth, on an actual cold evening, because October is the month the fire stops being decorative and becomes the gentle warmth.
We are in the 'ber months. And October, the last calm one before everything accelerates - is the best possible place to be.
October Snapshot (dates worth a circle)
These are the gentle pins that hold October in place. Grab a pen if you want to circle a few.
1 October — World Vegetarian Day: October's root vegetable abundance makes this feel entirely seasonal rather than preachy. A good excuse — if you needed one — to make something magnificent with parsnips and celeriac and a very good stock and nothing else whatsoever.
10 October — New Moon in Libra: The dark moon of mid-October. Libra — the sign of balance, thoughtful decisions, the honest weighing of things. The moon under which the October calendar gets properly sorted and the September resolutions get their first real test. See the New Moon Note below.
21 October — Apple Day: The orchard celebration — Somerset's proudest autumn moment. Varieties you can't pronounce, cider pressing in full swing, the farm shop doing something extraordinary with handwritten labels. Go if you possibly can.
20-22 October — Orionid Meteor Shower: Halley's comet again — October's quieter sister to the August Perseids. Less dramatic, but October skies are darker and clearer and the stars are doing something extraordinary. Worth an hour outside on a clear night, wrapped up properly, looking up.
21 October — Trafalgar Day: Nelson's victory, quietly observed. The British naval tradition doing its annual dignified thing.
25 October — Clocks Go Back (BST ends, 2am): The one morning a year you get an extra hour. The evening before: the Hunter's Moon rising copper and enormous. The morning after: the extra hour in your pocket. That is an exceptionally good weekend if you use it properly. See the Moon Moment section for how.
25 October evening — Hunter's Moon rising: Go outside at dusk on the 25th. The best viewing — the moon lifting amber and coppery above the Somerset fields, hazed with the woodsmoke of the first properly lit October fires. Five nights before Halloween. Ancient and gorgeous. The full story is in the Moon Moment below.
26 October — Full Hunter's Moon, 4:12am GMT: In Taurus — the sign of deep roots and physical comfort. Named for the hunters preparing meat for winter. Also the Travel Moon, the Dying Grass Moon, the Blood Moon of woodsmoke and harvest haze. The most practical and purposeful moon of the year.
Half Term — late October: The beautiful disruption. Grandparents roped in, or the whole family decamping somewhere for the week. Either way: embrace it. Fighting half term is always a losing battle and a waste of a perfectly good October week.
31 October — Halloween / Samhain: The ancient Celtic new year. The end of the harvest, the beginning of the dark half. In my world: heirloom pumpkins on the kitchen windowsill, a costume that makes someone laugh or think, people gathered in a warm house rather than plastic cobwebs on the gate. The old festival, honoured in a modern and slightly more relaxed way.
These are the gentle pins that hold October in place. Choose the ones that feel like yours and let the others drift past like the last of the leaves — beautiful, briefly, and entirely on their own schedule.
Summer is softening. That's not an ending. That's the best bit.
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Summer is softening. That's not an ending. That's the best bit. 〰️
Flora & Feelings
The colour, the cobwebs, the woodland treasures, and the garden going to sleep
October's landscape is showing off.
I know, I know — every month in this almanac seems to be showing off. But October's version is different from May's exuberance or August's golden confidence. October's showing off is quieter and more knowing — the display of something that understands it's nearly over and has decided to go out magnificently.
The leaves turning. Not all at once — gradually, hedgerow by hedgerow, the colour moving through rust and gold and the particular deep red of the field maple, the Somerset lanes becoming something that stops you mid-walk to just — stand there. The specific smell of October outside: wet earth, fallen leaves beginning their slow transformation, woodsmoke from the first properly lit fires drifting across the fields, the first cold air of the year meeting the last warm pockets of afternoon sunshine.
And in the morning — the cobwebs.
Studded with dew, catching the low October light at an angle that makes them look like something someone constructed deliberately and carefully overnight. They are in the hedgerow and across the garden gate and in the corners of the greenhouse and strung between the dahlias that are still — still — holding on. The October cobweb is one of the most quietly beautiful things the month offers and it never appears on a mood board and I want it to.
The Woodland Treasures
October's woods are full of things worth stopping for — and if you haven't walked a Somerset woodland this month, I encourage you to correct that immediately.
The hazelnuts are falling — the squirrels are intensely busy about this and they are correct to be. Pick them if you find them before the squirrels do. The fresh ones have a milky sweetness that the dried, shop-bought ones never quite replicate. Worth knowing. Worth the competition.
The sweet chestnuts — castanea sativa, not horse chestnuts, an important distinction if you want to eat them — are splitting from their extraordinary spiky green cases to reveal the glossy brown nuts inside. The Somerset woods that have sweet chestnut trees are giving them up now, freely, to anyone who walks underneath. Roasted over the fire or in a hot pan with a cross cut in the top, they smell like October concentrated into a single extraordinary scent. Eaten warm from the shell, burning your fingers slightly. One of the genuinely unrepeatable pleasures of the season.
The mushrooms. Oh, the mushrooms.
If you know what you're looking for — ceps, chanterelles, hedgehog mushrooms in the right woodland conditions — October is the month. If you don't know what you're looking for, please go with someone who does, or visit the farm shop where someone else has done the knowing and you can simply benefit from it. Either way: wild mushrooms in October, sautéed in good butter with garlic and thyme on thick toast, is one of the most extraordinary things you can eat in this season. I am very serious about this.
The sloes are still there for anyone who didn't get to them in September — deepening and improving as the first frosts do their work. Last chance. The sloe gin is not going to make itself.
The Garden Going Over
The dahlias are finally giving up. Not quietly — with full drama, still glowing in the low October light, the last ones standing more beautiful for being the last. Cut them. Bring them in. These are the final flowers from the cutting patch until next summer and they deserve a jug on the kitchen table for their last week.
After them: the rose hips and hawthorn berries, deep red and abundant in the hedgerows. The ivy coming into its own — that deep glossy green against stone walls that is October's most underrated beauty, the plant nobody photographs in October that absolutely should be photographed in October. Seed heads standing architectural and strange. Bare branches beginning.
The squashes and gourds on the kitchen windowsill — not as Halloween props but as harvest. The heirloom varieties from the farm shop: Crown Prince with its extraordinary blue-grey skin, the deep orange of the Butternut, the Delicata with its cream and green stripes. The colour of them sitting on the windowsill in the October light is worth the drive to the farm shop on its own. These are October's flowers, in a way. The harvest celebrated as beauty.
I always wonder, this month, if the lawn cut I'm about to do is the last one of the year. You never know when you're doing it. You mow it and think — probably not, there might be one more — and then there isn't. The mower goes away. The grass just gradually slows to a stop of its own accord, and summer is over not with ceremony but with the quiet absence of something you'd stopped noticing you were doing.
There is something about that unmarked ending that I find more moving than any dramatic farewell.
The borders get woodchipped — a few hours with a barrow and a bag of woodchip, tucking the garden in for winter, keeping the roots warm under the cold months to come. It looks like not very much from the outside. It feels, doing it, like one of the most caring and purposeful things October asks of a gardener.
Weather Soul
Ray Bradbury called October the October country — and I've never found a better phrase for the feeling of the month. The world at a particular angle. The light lower, the shadows longer. Everything more present for being more temporary.
The mornings are cold now — properly cold, not September's gentle suggestion of what was coming. The mist over the Somerset Levels burns off by ten if you're lucky and lingers all day if you're not, and both versions are beautiful in their own way, the clear version and the ghostly one. The afternoons still sometimes warm — that specific October gift of three o'clock sunshine that makes you think, just for a moment, that something is being given back.
And the light. The October light is the best light of the year for walking and the best light of the year for noticing. Low and golden, arriving at an angle that makes everything look simultaneously more beautiful and more temporary. Everything is at its most itself just before it lets go.
The 'ber months are here. And the first of the warm ones — the last calm one — is doing its most extraordinary work.
Folklore Focus: Samhain, the Hunter's Moon, and the Month Called Eight
Octo — The Month Called Eight
October comes from octo — Latin for eight. The eighth month in the original Roman calendar, before January and February were added and the whole thing shuffled two positions along. It's still called eight. It still carries the number in its name like a quiet piece of evidence that the year was once counted differently.
There's something clarifying about that — a month named for a position it no longer holds, carrying its original identity anyway. October doesn't care that it's technically month ten now. October knows what it is.
Samhain — The Ancient Halloween
The Celtic festival of Samhain — pronounced Sow-in, the mh silent in the Irish way — falls on 31 October and is one of the four great fire festivals of the year, alongside Imbolc in February, Beltane in May and Lughnasadh in August.
The end of the harvest. The beginning of the dark half of the year. The night when the veil between the living and the dead was believed to be at its thinnest — when the ancestors could visit, the spirits walk, the fires were lit on hilltops across Britain and Ireland to guide the dead home and keep the darkness back.
This is where Halloween comes from. Every bit of it.
The carved lanterns — originally turnips in the British tradition, considerably harder to carve than a pumpkin and considerably more unsettling to look at, which was the point. The costumes — worn to confuse the spirits, to blend in with whatever was walking. The gathering — because nobody faced Samhain alone, because the fire on the hill was the community's fire, lit together, watched together, the warmth shared against the dark.
The commercial Halloween of today borrowed these bones and dressed them in plastic and orange. But the bones are genuinely ancient, and on the evening of the 31st, standing outside in the October dark with a fire going and the people you love nearby, you can still feel something of the original — the year ending, the dark beginning, the warmth chosen deliberately against it.
In my world this means: heirloom pumpkins on the windowsill rather than carved on the step. A costume that makes someone laugh or references a book. People gathered in a warm house with something good to eat and drink. The old festival, honoured with the things it was actually about — fire, community, the acknowledgement that the dark is coming and we face it together.
Which is not so different from what it always was.
Octo — The Month Called Eight
Before I talk about the Hunter's Moon — a brief, important note on what it is not.
It is not the eclipse Blood Moon — that was August, and it was extraordinary. It is not the Harvest Moon — that was September, and it was golden and romantic and named for farmers bringing in the crops by moonlight.
The Hunter's Moon is named for something more direct. The animals fattened on summer's abundance — deer, boar, the game birds now in full season — could be seen and hunted by the light of this particular moon. The larder needed filling. Winter was coming. The Hunter's Moon was the moon you worked by because you had to, because the alternative was not eating.
There is nothing romantic about that. And yet.
It rises coppery-red in October, hazed with the woodsmoke of the first proper fires and the last of the harvest burns, lower in the sky than the summer moons, moving slower across the horizon. The atmospheric effect of all that smoke and haze — that's what gives it the Blood Moon name in October. Not an eclipse. Just the world doing what the world does in autumn: burning the old things to make room for the new, and the moon wearing the evidence of it.
The Travel Moon. The Dying Grass Moon. The Blood Moon of harvest haze. The Hunter's Moon collects names the way October collects fallen leaves — each one true, each one adding something, none of them quite the whole story.
The October Country
Ray Bradbury's phrase for October — the October country — is one of the best descriptions of a month I've ever read.
The world at a particular angle. Darker, quieter, more interior. The light lower, the shadows longer. Everything turned slightly inward. Not gothic — not cobwebs and plastic skeletons — just the world as it genuinely is in the fourth week of October, when the clocks have gone back and the dark comes in at five and the fire is the most important thing in the house.
That's the October country. That's always been October.
And it's worth naming it as such because the commercial version of October — all orange and black and aggressive pumpkin content — misses the actual feeling of the month entirely. The actual feeling is older and quieter and considerably more interesting. It's the mist on the Levels at eight in the morning. The bare hawthorn revealing its red hips. The woodsmoke. The fire. The drawing in.
The October country is where I want to be every year from about the 10th onwards. I'm never disappointed.
Everything is the colour of honey. Don't rush through it.
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Everything is the colour of honey. Don't rush through it. 〰️
Moon Moment: The Hunter's Moon
Full Moon in Taurus - The Hunter's Moon
Monday 26 October 2026 at 4:12am GMT
Best viewed Sunday evening 25 October
The Hunter's Moon.
Every month has its moon name and every name has its story. But the Hunter's Moon is the one I come back to — not for its beauty, though it is beautiful, not for its poetry, though it has some — but for what it actually meant to the people who named it.
It meant: go out and work by this light because the alternative is not eating.
I find that more moving than any of the more romantic moon names. The Strawberry Moon is lovely. The Flower Moon is poetic. The Hunter's Moon is necessary. It's the moon that fed people through winter. The practical, purposeful, entirely unsentimental moon of October — and also, as it happens, the most atmospheric one of the year.
It rises on the evening of the 25th just after sunset — amber, coppery, enormous on the horizon, hazed with the woodsmoke of the first properly lit October fires drifting across the Somerset fields. The Blood Moon effect: not an eclipse, but atmosphere. The world burning the old things to make room for the new, and the moon wearing the evidence.
It moves slower across the horizon than the summer moons. It gives light at exactly the time, for the next few evenings, that the dark comes in fastest. And this year it rises in Taurus — the sign of deep physical comfort, of roots, of the sensory and the practical. Which feels exactly right for the Hunter's Moon, for October, for the point in the year where the ideas of September become the commitments of October.
Five nights before Halloween. Five nights before the veil thins and the year ends and the dark half properly begins.
The Hunter's Moon Ritual
This is the practical moon. The preparation moon. So the ritual is practical.
On the evening of Sunday 25th October — the last evening of British Summer Time, before the clocks go back in the small hours — go outside at dusk and watch the Hunter's Moon rise.
Take something warm. A cup of tea, a glass of something, whatever the evening calls for. Go to wherever you can see the eastern horizon clearly. Wait.
Watch it lift — amber, coppery, larger than you expect, the haze of October giving it the Blood Moon colour without the drama of an eclipse. Five minutes is enough. You will think about it for weeks.
Then — standing under the Hunter's Moon, before you go back inside — take stock. Not metaphorically. Actually.
The logs ordered? The pantry sorted? The November and December calendar planned? The Father Christmas visit secured? The jumpers assessed, the boots waterproofed, the October commitment kept?
Name the one practical thing you're still putting off — the one that keeps getting moved to next week. Name it under the Hunter's Moon on the 25th. Do it before the clocks go back on Sunday morning.
The extra hour you gain when the clocks change is your reward for doing the thing.
The Hunter's Moon doesn't want your feelings about autumn. It wants your larder full and your log store stacked. Everything else is a bonus.
New Moon Note
Saturday 10 October — The Libra Moon
The new moon falls on the 10th — right in the middle of October, the half-term chaos approaching, the clocks not yet changed but the dark arriving noticeably earlier every evening.
It's in Libra — the sign of balance, of the careful weighing of things, of the honest decision made without drama. The appropriate moon for the month where commitment becomes the question.
September was the fresh start. The notebook opened. The intention named. The friend called, the manuscript opened, the piano touched for the first time since June.
The Libra new moon on the 10th asks, quietly and without judgment: is it still happening?
Not a performance review. Just a check-in. The honest inventory on the darkest night of October, by the light of nothing at all.
If the answer is yes — good. October is for protecting it. The dark evenings and the closed curtains and the fire and the early nights are all working in your favour now. Use them.
If the answer is not yet — also good. The new moon is the beginning of a new lunar cycle. The darkest night is always the beginning. Write it in the notebook again. First page if you need to. Then close it and trust October.
The Joy Edit
Six invitations for the committed life
Right. October. Here's what I think this month is actually for.
September was the fresh start — the notebook opened, the intentions named, the clarity returned after the summer drift. October is the test. Not a dramatic, pass-or-fail reckoning — just the quiet question of whether the September resolution was real or whether it was September enthusiasm that won't survive contact with a rainy Tuesday in October and the third consecutive Soup Sunday and the realisation that the fire needs actual wood in it to work.
The answer, if you do these six things, is real.
Order the practical things: Logs. Kindling. Oil if you need it. The fire that has been about to be lit since September needs to actually be lit, and the wood needs to actually be there when you do. This is October's most unglamorous invitation and also its most satisfying. Check the pantry while you're at it — throw out the things that have been there since 2024, restock with the things October actually uses. The fully prepared house. The warm house that actually is warm because you did the practical thing. Deeply, quietly, completely satisfying.
Buy the new socks: October is sock renewal month and I will not be moved on this. Open the drawer. Assess the situation honestly. Replace what needs replacing. The specific pleasure of new socks in October is completely disproportionate to the object and entirely, genuinely, worth pursuing. This is joy in its simplest and most domestic form and I recommend it without qualification.
Sort the calendar — now: By the middle of October, November and December should be planned. The Christmas food shop slot booked — yes, now, because the good ones fill up faster than you think. The celebrations in the diary and confirmed. The Father Christmas visit secured — this is not optional, this is urgent, this is the most important October admin there is — and the family gatherings locked in. Do this now. Feel, once it's done, a specific calm that I cannot recommend highly enough. November will thank you. December will thank you. Your future self will thank you considerably.
Walk somewhere worth walking: October is the best walking month of the year. The lanes and footpaths are doing something extraordinary with colour and light and smell that rewards the person who goes slowly enough to notice. Find somewhere with a destination — a hill, a viewpoint, a village with a pub at the end. Walk in the October light, which is low and golden and makes everything look simultaneously more beautiful and more temporary. Then eat a proper pub roast by the fire. Earn it completely. This is October at its most itself.
Forage or farm-shop the seasonal treasures: The sweet chestnuts are in the woods and at the farm shop right now. The hazelnuts are falling. The wild mushrooms — if you know what you're looking for, or know someone who does — are in the Somerset woodland floors this month and will not be there next month. Go and find them, or buy them locally and cook them properly. The sweet chestnut roasted over the fire, the mushroom on toast with butter and thyme — these are October flavours that exist for approximately three weeks and then don't. Pay attention.
Watch the Hunter's Moon rise: Evening of the 25th, dusk, eastern horizon. Five minutes. The most practical and purposeful moon of the year, rising amber and coppery and enormous just as British Summer Time makes its final appearance. See the full Moon Moment for the ritual — but do this. You will think about it for weeks.
October reminder — write this somewhere obvious: The commitment begins. Was the September resolution real? October is how you find out — and the answer, if you show up for it, is yes.
Picnic, But Make It October: The pub roast, the orchard, and the last outdoor lunch
October's picnic is not a blanket-on-the-ground picnic. Let's be honest about this — it's too cold for that now, or cold enough that the blanket-on-the-ground version requires a level of commitment that tips from joyful into performative, and October is the month we agreed to stop performing and start doing.
October's version is the pub roast. The orchard visit. The walk that ends somewhere warm with something extraordinary to eat and a fire going and your boots still slightly muddy from the path that brought you there.
This is not a compromise. This is an upgrade.
The Pub Roast
The best pub roast of the year happens in October. Not because the food is different — though it is, because the root vegetables are in their absolute pomp and the gravy has a quality in October that June's simply doesn't possess — but because you've earned it in a way that no other month quite allows.
You've walked in cold air. You've smelled the leaves and the woodsmoke and the wet earth of the October lanes. You've debated with yourself about whether the hill was strictly necessary before conceding that it absolutely was. You've worked up the kind of appetite that only cold-weather walking produces.
And then the pub. The low ceiling, the fire that's been going since lunchtime, the menu that says roast beef or roast lamb or roast pork with crackling that is actually crisp and not the saddest version of itself. The gravy. The roast parsnips. The Yorkshire pudding if they do them. The glass of something red.
This is October's picnic. This is the season's version of the blanket on the ground — and it is, without question, the better version.
Apple Day — 21 October
The orchard visit belongs in October's picnic section because it is, at its heart, the same impulse — going somewhere beautiful, with an appetite for the season, and coming home with more than you planned.
Somerset's Apple Day — the pressing, the tasting, the farm shop overflowing with varieties you've never encountered — is one of the specific unrepeatable pleasures of living here in October. Go. Take the children. Try the varieties with the handwritten labels. Buy more than is strictly sensible. Come home smelling of apple and cold air and feel completely correct about your choices.
The Last Outdoor Lunch
There may be one — the last outdoor lunch of the year. On a warm October afternoon, if the weather is kind, if the sun comes out and the air is still and the light is doing that extraordinary low-golden thing it does in October at about three o'clock.
You won't know it's the last one until it's already over. Have it anyway.
What to pack — the October basket:
— A flask of tea. This month it is genuinely survival, not style.
— Something substantial — the October sandwich that is really a meal: good bread, Godminster doing what it always does, something slow-cooked and sliced alongside, a handful of rocket and mustard.
— Sweet chestnuts if you've found or bought them — roasted at home first, wrapped in foil, still warm.
— The apple from the orchard visit, eaten in the field.
— Something warm for the hands — the fingerless gloves, the hand warmers, whatever it takes.
— The good flask. Still mandatory. Until further notice.
Etiquette:
Wave at the other walkers — they're choosing October outside just like you, and October walkers have a particular solidarity. Leave the lane as you found it. And if the pub is full when you arrive: wait. An October pub on a Sunday afternoon is worth waiting for every single time.
The best October picnic is the pub roast after the walk, eaten by the fire, with mud still on your boots and the October lanes still in your lungs and the cold still in your cheeks. That's the one. It's always that one.
Cooking with the Seasons
The braise, the soup, the chestnuts, and the breakfast that comes back
October's kitchen is the warmest room in the house.
Not because it's the only room with the heating on — though by late October, that might be true of a few rooms that quietly get abandoned until spring — but because October is when cooking becomes a full-bodied activity again. The long braise. The soup that takes the whole pot and the whole afternoon. The pie that involves other people and gets photographed mid-mess rather than finished-and-perfect, because that's the only honest version of October pie.
The kitchen in October is not support staff. It is the main event.
The Breakfast Returns
This is where it begins. The overnight oats prepared the night before — oats, yoghurt, honey, a grated apple, left in the fridge to do their quiet, industrious thing overnight — eaten at the table in the morning like someone who thought ahead. Which some mornings I did.
Warm porridge on the mornings I forgot to prep. Which, if we're being honest, is most mornings. Brown sugar, a little cream, the specific and disproportionate satisfaction of a warm bowl on a cold October morning at a table I'm actually sitting at.
The return of the breakfast table. The sitting down for it. The cup of tea alongside it. October quietly insisting that mornings deserve better than a banana grabbed on the way to the car. And it's right. October is always right about this.
What to Cook This Month
The First Braise: This is the ceremony. Short rib, venison stew, oxtail if you're feeling ambitious — something that goes in the pot in the morning and comes out in the afternoon having done something extraordinary. The house smells right. The kitchen is warm. People come home to it rather than arriving at an empty room. The first braise of October is not just a meal — it's an announcement that a different season has begun and this household is ready for it. Full recipe on the blog.
The Sweet Chestnut Moment: Cross-cut the tops, roast them over the fire or in a very hot pan — 200°C, twenty minutes — until the skins split and the flesh inside is soft and sweet and slightly smoky. Eat them warm from the shell, burning your fingers slightly in the process, with nothing alongside them whatsoever because they need nothing. This is the most October thing you can eat and it costs almost nothing if you've been paying attention to the woodland floor this month.
Wild Mushrooms on Toast: Ceps, chanterelles, or whatever the farm shop has that looks interesting — sautéed in good butter with a crushed garlic clove and fresh thyme, a little splash of something, piled onto thick toast made from good bread. Salt. A little parsley. That's it. If you've been waiting all year for a recipe that makes you feel like you know what you're doing in October, this is the one.
Squash Soup — Sundays: Every Sunday in October, a different soup. Butternut and ginger with a little crème fraîche. Crown Prince roasted until caramelised, blitzed with stock and a knob of butter. Celeriac and apple — make this one, it will surprise you. Roasted tomato with the very last vine tomatoes before they're truly done. A different pot each Sunday. The kitchen doing its October best.
Root Vegetable Roast: Parsnips, celeriac, beetroot, swede, carrots — all in together, olive oil, sea salt, a little honey, roasted at high heat until caramelised and slightly crisp at the edges. The simplest and most satisfying thing October's oven produces, eaten as a main or alongside whatever the Sunday roast is this week. The root vegetables in October are extraordinary — buy them from the farm shop where they were grown last week, not last month.
Apple Tart: The apples are the point this month and they deserve something simple enough not to get in their way. Thin pastry, fanned apple slices, a little caster sugar, a little butter. Baked until the edges catch. Eaten warm with cream or crème fraîche. The Somerset variety from the farm shop — whichever one the handwritten label recommends for baking. Trust the label.
Toad-in-the-Hole: Good sausages — from the farm shop butcher, this is non-negotiable — baked in Yorkshire pudding batter until puffed and golden and slightly dramatic. Eaten with onion gravy and whatever greens are still going. A Monday evening supper that makes Monday evenings significantly more bearable. October needs this in its repertoire.
Treacle Tart: Old-fashioned, slightly sticky, deeply satisfying. Golden syrup, breadcrumbs, a squeeze of lemon. Eaten warm with cream. Without comment about calories. That's October food. That's always been October food.
Tiny Somerset Swaps
Local apples from the orchard or farm shop — the varieties with the handwritten labels, the ones that taste of this county in this month. Root vegetables from a Somerset grower — the farm shop will have parsnips and celeriac and swede the like of which the supermarket genuinely cannot match. Sausages from the farm shop butcher for the toad-in-the-hole — the difference is everything. Sweet chestnuts from the Somerset woods or the farm shop — this month only, real ones, not the vacuum-packed variety. Local cider from whoever presses it nearby — October is cider month in Somerset and the farm shop will know exactly who to point you towards.
Waste-Not Note
Root vegetable excess → soup, always, without exception. Apple surplus from the orchard visit → tart, crumble, sauce, freeze in labelled portions. Sweet chestnut shells → the compost bin. Mushroom stalks → stock, or chopped finely into the braise. Leftover braise → the best weekday lunch you'll have all month, eaten cold from the pot standing in the kitchen at noon. Treacle tart leftover → warm gently in the oven the next morning and tell yourself it's breakfast, because in October it absolutely is.
This month you’ll find me …
October is the month I stop talking about getting ready for winter and actually get ready for winter.
The difference matters more than it sounds.
Going up to the attic and coming back down with the waterproofs and the jumpers and the box of things that have been patiently waiting since April. The specific October smell of an attic — slightly dusty, slightly cold, slightly full of things you forgot you owned. The finding of the jumper you'd been thinking about since August.
Checking the jumpers. Every one. Holding them up and asking the honest question. Some go to the charity shop. Some get a proper wool wash and a new lease of life. One — there is always one — gets replaced. The new jumper arriving. Putting it on. Immediately and completely feeling better about October.
Buying new socks. October is sock renewal month. The drawer has been assessed. The situation has been addressed. The specific and completely disproportionate pleasure of new socks in October is real and I fully recommend it.
Waterproofing the boots and the waxed jacket and the bags that need it. The caring for things properly. The satisfaction of doing it before you need it rather than in the moment of crisis, standing in a puddle.
The baskets by the front door: sandals out, hats and gloves and the things October actually needs in. This swap happens every year and every year it feels like a small but significant statement.
Woodchipping the flower borders on a dry October afternoon — the wheelbarrow, the bag of woodchip, the tucking-in of the garden for winter. It looks like not very much. It feels like one of the most purposeful things I do all month.
Wondering, each time I cut the grass, if this is the last time this year. Not minding either way. Doing it anyway.
Foraging for sweet chestnuts on a Somerset woodland walk — or, more honestly, buying them from the farm shop and roasting them over the fire on a Sunday evening because that is the realistic version and it is just as good.
Walking somewhere worth walking, every Sunday that the October weather allows. The pub roast at the end. The mud on the boots on the way home. The complete correctness of all of it.
Making soup. A different one each Sunday. Sitting down to eat it at the table with a proper spoon and the curtains closed against the dark and the fire going and something good on in the background and feeling — quietly, without performance — that this is exactly the right way to spend an October Sunday.
Sorting the November and December calendar by the middle of the month. The Christmas food shop slot booked. The celebrations confirmed. The Father Christmas visit secured — this is urgent, this is now, this is the most important October admin and I will not apologise for saying so — and the family gatherings in the diary. Then closing the laptop and making a cup of tea and feeling the specific calm of someone who has done the thing before the panic required it.
Watching the Hunter's Moon rise on the evening of the 25th — coppery, enormous, moving slowly above the Somerset fields in the last of British Summer Time, hazed with woodsmoke. Taking stock under it. Doing the thing I'd been putting off. Earning the extra hour.
Staying in on a Sunday evening with the fire properly lit and a bowl of something warm and a book I'm genuinely reading rather than displaying on a shelf, and feeling — completely, quietly, without anyone watching — exactly where I'm supposed to be.
October. The last calm month. The commitment is real.
May your log store be full, your jumpers be soft, your sweet chestnuts burn your fingers in the best possible way, and your October be as calm and as purposeful as it deserves to be before November arrives with its ideas.
With love, Gemma x
Stay a while …
Come and be nosey …
The blanket is always out over on Instagram. Behind the scenes Picnicscapes, Somerset life as it actually happens, and the occasional opinion about gingham.
