A Harvest Moon.

                                                                                 Moon Phases.

While writing the Facts of the month for September I remember reading an article about the different phases of the moon, one of these is Harvest Moon that is the name our ancestors called the month of September. This was before the calendar had been invented and it was how our ancestors remembered the changes of each season and kept track of each month of the year.

A full moon happened every twenty nine days which means that on average there is a new moon once each month, so as the seasons changed our ancestors gave each new moon a name that related to the natural world. The names varied slightly in different regions and cultures listed here are the more common names that you may have heard or come across before.


                                                      January                          Wolf Moon.
                                                      February                        Snow or Ice Moon.
                                                      March                            The Worm or Storm Moon.
                                                      April                              The Growing Moon.
                                                      May                               The Flower or Hare Moon.
                                                      June                               The Strawberry or Mead Moon.
                                                      July                                Buck or Hay Moon.
                                                     August                            Sturgeon or Corn Moon.
                                                     September                       Harvest Moon.
                                                     October                           Hunter's Moon.
                                                     November                       Beaver or Snow Moon.
                                                     December                       Cold or Winter Moon.

A Harvest Moon.

                                                                                                                               

Some of the meanings or the names given to some of the phases may be hard to work out why they were so named but with a little thought most of them will become obvious to you i.e.; April's moon is the time that crops would be sewn, June would relate to the time they made Mead an early type of beer, July is the start of the rutting season for Roe Deer hence Buck and Hay making would also begin this month, so most of the names become more logical and easier to work out their meaning. Two of the most important moons of the seasons were the Harvest Moon  (because it is the closest to the Autumn Equinox ) around the 21st of September and the other is the (Hunters Moon in October). The reason being, that both of these moons rise more quickly in to the sky on successive evenings than any other moons of the year. This means that the period of darkness is shorter between Sunset and Moonrise , so there was more light in the sky for Farmers and Hunters to carry on with their work. Also these two Moons were special because they appear much bigger because of the Earth's tilt, so they appear to hang much lower in the sky at this time of the year.