Welcome to the 2026 edition of the award-winning Fern podcast as the season turns.

Released on the first of each month, the episodes follow the changing landscape of the seasons,

from the moon and the stars to the tides and the trees.

I'm Leah Lane Dirtz, author of The Almanac, a seasonal guide, and this podcast is a collaboration between myself and Fern,

makers of small batch seasonal perfume. I love Fern. Today I'm wearing their winter 26 fragrance, a fresh coastal blend with notes of black tang seaweed, petulia and oak moss.

Applying it each morning is a lovely little ritual that keeps me grounded and helps me on my quest to live in tune with the seasons.

It's so special to be launching the sixth year of As the Season Turns.

For 2026, we'll be exploring life around water, above and below it, beside and upon it.

Joining me on my Waterside Adventures is Lisa Knapp, our new folk musician in residence,

who will be playing us a folk song for each month of the year.

I'm also delighted to welcome the author Kannon Jones, who is writing a series of stories for us based on the great Welsh Myth Cycle, the Mabinogion.

Zoe Gilbert, folklorist and author of Mischief Acts, returns with a new series on foraging

and folklore. And field recordist Alice Boyd, who continues to create our found sounds, will be recording

the music of Britain's songbirds

and learning about the shape of their songs. We hope that this brief guide to the month

ahead will awaken you to the rhythms of this new year and help you to settle deeper into

the seasons.

The canal in January lies hushed beneath a pewter sky.

The air smells faintly metallic, cold water and wet iron,

while the to-path glistens with a sheen of frost, its edges fringed with brittle grass arched under silver.

Once, these quiet waters were anything but still.

The canal was a moving artery of industry, carrying coal, grain and iron between cities and factories, vital to the industrial revolution's relentless progress.

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