An Old Tradition Rooted in the Land

The harvest festival we know in Britain is a Victorian revival with much older bones. The Reverend Robert Stephen Hawker of Morwenstow in Cornwall is usually credited with the 1843 service that invited parishioners to bring the first fruits of their fields into church. Behind it lay older markers: Lammas on 1 August, when a loaf baked from the first wheat was taken to church, and Michaelmas on 29 September, the quarter day for rents, geese and hiring fairs.

Most churches now keep harvest festival on a Sunday in late September or early October, often near the harvest moon or the Sunday after Michaelmas. Village halls tend to follow a week or two later, once the last apples and marrows are in. The date matters less than the pattern: gather, give thanks, share the food.

The Songs of Harvest

Harvest hymns do a particular job: they are about ploughing, sowing, growing and gathering, and they give a congregation that may not sing often a reason to sing loudly. A dependable core list includes:

• We Plough the Fields and Scatter — the tune most people know, with its chorus about all good gifts around us.
• Come, Ye Thankful People, Come — traditionally sung to ST GEORGE'S WINDSOR, strong and processional.
• Bringing in the Sheaves — rousing, loved by children.
• To Thee, O Lord, Our Hearts We Raise — a harvest favourite with a fine Victorian tune.
• For the Fruits of His Creation — a twentieth-century text that suits allotments as neatly as broad acres.

Four hymns are plenty. Keep them in singable keys, usually C, D or E flat, and tell the organist or pianist well in advance. If a school has taught a harvest song, invite the children to sing it again on the Sunday and give them a front pew. At a hall supper, two or three hymns after the food work better than a recital.

Dressing the Church and the Village Hall

Harvest decorations are an exercise in abundance and restraint. The palette is whatever the parish has grown: wheat sheaves, barley, oats, hops, apples, pears, plums, marrows, onions, carrots, potatoes, beetroot, leeks, cabbages, chrysanthemums, dahlias, sunflowers, rosehips and conkers. The flower guild usually leads, but the best displays draw on allotment holders, farmers, gardeners and beekeepers, so a jar or two of honey often appears.

Dress the porch, font, pulpit, altar rail, window sills and lychgate, then the stage of the village hall. A few rules keep things looking well:

• Dry everything first. Damp wheat and fruit will mildew within days.
• Use hessian, baskets, wooden crates and tiered boxes to lift produce off polished wood and stone.
• Tie sheaves with raffia or garden string, and avoid plastic where you can.
• Group by colour and shape. Marrows, then apples, then roots reads better than a jumble.
• Plan what happens next. Auction fresh produce for charity, send flowers to the housebound and give tinned goods to a food bank.

The Harvest Loaf and the Corn Dolly

Two decorations carry the deepest folklore. The first is the harvest loaf, a plaited bread shaped like a sheaf of wheat, sometimes with a small dough mouse beside it — the harvest mouse of the fields. A baker can make one from strong white flour with a little wholemeal, salt, yeast, water and butter. Shape it in stages, glaze with beaten egg, bake in a moderate oven, then cool on a rack. If it is to sit on display for a fortnight, make a second loaf to eat.

The second is the corn dolly, traditionally made from the last sheaf cut at harvest and kept until the following year to hold the spirit of the corn. Simple versions suit beginners: use dry straw, soak it briefly if brittle, and plait or spiral a small neck, tying firmly with thread. Hang it in the kitchen or give it to the youngest child. Farm shops and craft stalls often sell good ones, and they last for years if kept dry.

The Harvest Supper and the Produce Auction

The supper is where the tradition becomes a proper village occasion. Shepherd's pie, hotpot, roast ham, jacket potatoes, pickles, beetroot and cheese are reliable, followed by apple, blackberry or plum crumble with cream. Cider, elderberry cordial and tea do the rest. Keep tickets cheap, mix the tables and sit children beside older neighbours.

After the meal, hold a produce auction. It sounds old-fashioned and it works: a marrow goes for a pound, a jar of honey for three, a harvest loaf for whatever the room will pay. Money goes to charity; the auctioneer can be anyone with a loud voice. A short quiz and a raffle finish the evening.

Passing It On

Harvest festival survives because each generation makes it again. Fix the date in the church and hall diaries by the end of August. Ask the flower guild to lead on decorations and the school to prepare a song. Source wheat and straw from a local farm with the farmer's permission, and dry it in a shed or garage. Store sheaves, corn dollies and fabric in a dry box labelled with the year.

Most of all, keep it generous. The point of harvest is not a perfect display but a shared table, and a church or hall full of produce that will be eaten, sold or given away. Whether the hymns are sung to a Victorian organ or a slightly tired piano, the pattern holds: the fields have given, and the parish says thank you.