Saint Hildegard Day
You're invited to join us at the farm for our annual harvest season celebration in mid-September to honor the rebel Saint Hildegard von Bingen - 12th century herbalist, healer, poet, musician, artist and prophetess who coined the term Viriditas to describe the animating life force she perceived within all things.
This is an event that echoes the spirit of viriditas - offering healing not only to land and community, but across borders and wounds of the world.
Saint Hildegard Day
Sunday, September 14
A Celebration of Spirit, Song & Solidarity - Benefiting the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund
Join us for a heart-opening day inspired by the life and luminous teachings of Saint Hildegard of Bingen - Benedictine abbess, herbalist, visionary, mystic, composer, and fierce advocate for the sacred web of creation.
We gather in her honor to celebrate what she cherished most:
music, healing plants, good food, and the greening force of divine compassion.
The Day Includes:
– Free nourishing soup and homemade bread
– Talks and reflections on Saint Hildegard’s wisdom
– Music inspired by her compositions and the land
– Time in the Pollinator Field and the Gardens – a living embodiment of Hildegard’s viriditas
– A spirited procession through the garden and around the wildflower meadow with drums, chants, laughter and song
– Offerings and prayers for peace and justice
This joyful gathering is offered in support of the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund —because Hildegard’s legacy calls us not only to tend the earth, but also to stand with the vulnerable, to bring care where there is suffering, and to let our love flow across boundaries.
Let’s come together as earth-lovers, justice-seekers, plant-people, mystics, and neighbors - to celebrate life, cultivate beauty, and offer what we can to those in need.
Suggested Donation: Pay What You Can
All proceeds benefit PCRF (Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund)
Everyone is welcome. No one turned away.
Bring your voice, your heart, your presence.
Bring a drum or rattle for the procession if you wish.
Come as you are, and be part of something meaningful.
Our herbal apothecary will be open, 10-3. You are free to roam around the gardens or take a trail walk down to the stream. It's beautiful down there this time of year.
A fun and lively procession through the garden, up past the orchard and around the pollinator field in honor of Saint Hildegard is one of the highlights of the day…it happens at 2PM! Bring drums, shakers, noise makers, flags, banners and your walking shoes! We have the kioti to carry those with walking limitations. Our School House is being turned into Saint Hildegard Central for the day - her music will be playing and talks will take place in there as well.
At 10am Gail will open our festivities with a prayer followed by a brief sharing of some of her favorite quotes from Saint Hildegard’s writings. She will offer a presentation on Maine’s Most Abundant Pollinators and discuss plantings that attract and support them.
Suzanne Stone will offer a presentation honoring the inspiring life of Saint Hildegard through her commitment to visions for a more compassionate world, to Veriditas, the ever-greening power of nature, & understanding how her messages from the 12th century still apply today, calling for a deep devotion to the Earth from whence we come & the call for liberation for all beings. We will listen to some of the songs Hildegard composed, gaze upon some of her paintings, & delve into a few of her top plant allies.
Cecilia Quimby will have her Reiki table set up and will offer Reiki treatments from 10-2.
There will be a sacred fire burning throughout the day. A fabulous lunch as well as beverages will be available, impeccably prepared by Rosa Rosario.
As gardeners and herbalists we all carry a spark of Saint Hildegard in our wild hearts. Her viriditas, perfectly describes the life force we all work with on a daily basis, most of us with great reverence. Saint Hildegard was a woman centuries before her time - she was a rebel of the highest order, a teacher and leader of women, a prayer warrior, poet, musician, artist, healer, seer, and much more.
We are privileged to engage the greening force as an integral part of the work we do. Each of us transforming earth, water, fire and air into the foods and medicines that become, in the process, a unique expression of who we are. We carry a great treasure, the wisdom of the earth, in our veins. We offer our gifts without hesitation and are grateful for the work we do in this world.
Let's celebrate together and give great thanks to the land and the plants, for calling us, and for all the multitude of ways that they support us. Rejuvenate us. Make us Holy.
Let's honor a great ancestor herbalist together, She Who Led the Way, Saint Hildegard von Bingen, as we bring our 2025 growing season to a lively end.
Harvest Blessings, Gail Faith Edwards and the Blessed Maine Herb Farm Family
Where Wild Beauty Meets Cultivated Abundance: Our Gardens, Orchard & Pollinator Meadow
Above our herb gardens, along the edge of our orchard - where pears, plums, and a handful of apples stretch their limbs toward the sky - we’ve planted a one-acre pollinator field sown with native wildflowers.
This living meadow is a sanctuary for the winged ones - bees, butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, and a host of beneficial insects. It hums with color and life from early spring through the golden light of autumn.
The gardens, orchard and the wildflowers form a kind of reciprocal ecosystem:
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The gardens and orchard provide early blooms for hungry pollinators emerging from winter.
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The meadow offers continuous nectar and pollen, sustaining them through the season.
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In return, the pollinators move through both, ensuring abundant fruit and seed.
Together, they create a resilient landscape - one that supports biodiversity, improves soil health, and invites beauty and song into every corner of the farm. Veriditas!
This is more than habitat. It’s a sacred invitation to co-create with the natural world. A blooming gesture of kinship. A promise to protect what sustains us.
Our Saint Hildegard Procession winds through all of these spaces, each step we take, a prayer of thanks for the bounty.
Here is a blessing for the pollinators—those winged emissaries of life who move between blossom and fruit, wildness and cultivation, earth and sky.
Blessing of the Pollinators
Come, you who hum the song of creation,
you bees in golden skirts,
you butterflies with stained-glass wings,
you hummingbirds who sip the sun.
Come, moth of midnight velvet,
fly of iridescent shimmer,
beetle and wasp and all the unnamed ones
who labor unseen
in the sacred, silent work of flowering.
We bless you.
With open fields and uncut stems,
with nectar-rich blooms from spring’s first light
to the long golden dusk of autumn,
we welcome you home.
May this land offer you safety—
hollow stems and sun-warmed soil for nesting,
cool stones and dewdrops for drinking,
a wild corner where no blade cuts,
no poison harms.
You are the bridge-makers—
between seed and fruit,
blossom and harvest,
invisible and seen.
For every plum on the branch,
every wild rose in bloom,
every orchard tree heavy with sweetness
we thank you.
May your wings never tire,
your paths never be broken.
May your numbers grow and your songs continue
for generations to come.
This field is yours.
This orchard is yours.
This prayer is yours.