Monday 10 October 2016


 

HARVEST FESTIVAL - WINCHELSEA STYLE

 

(Warning - this blog post is rather sanctimonious)

 
To me, harvest festival is one of the most beautiful events in the church calendar. This is not just because it occurs in autumn, when the earth is resplendent with shades of gold and russet and the air suffused with the scent of wood smoke, but because it evokes such powerful memories of my childhood growing up on a farm and of our little village church which was always crammed to the rafters with every sort of produce imaginable – from local farmers, from local fruit growers, from gardeners, from retired gentlemen with just a greenhouse and elderly widows with just a flowerpot. It was the time of year when the ladies of the parish went to town creating ingenious corn dolly swags and upside-down flower arrangements and everybody joined in the task of making the church look spectacular for the harvest festival service. Whether one believed that nature’s bounty was endowed by God or some other deity or simply by some unnameable force, one couldn’t help but be amazed by its sheer energy and profusion, by its colour and beauty and variety. The festival brought together the entire community in celebration of something very profound – an awareness that, however far technology has brought us from our Neolithic forbears who first tilled the soil, we are still creatures who need to eat, who rejoice in growing things and who should be grateful that, unlike so many of our fellow humans, we are not going hungry.

Now, in extreme old age, I have the good fortune to have pitched up in Winchelsea, East Sussex - England’s smallest and arguably most beautiful town. Yet this is a community very different from the one I grew up in. Its residents – to put it politely – live a very long way from the source of production or any notion of material need. When I mentioned to a neighbour who’s a big noise in the church that I always love Harvest Festival, she informed me that they were not going for huge displays of fruit and vegetables this year but for a more ‘streamlined’ approach. When I asked why, she explained that nobody knew what to do with ‘all that stuff’ afterwards. EXCUSE ME? You don’t know what to DO with a cornucopia of fresh, delicious, locally-grown produce? Talk about a First World problem! It is yet another homage to the God of Tidiness, the inertia of rule by petty, parochial committee, the triumph of convenience over conviction. It’s the same attitude that condemned an unhappy friend of ours who drank herself to death to have her ashes strewn at the farthest limits of consecrated ground, next to the compost heap, and which decreed that the epitaph on Spike Milligan’s grave – ‘I told you I was ill’ – should be written in Gaelic as it was thought unseemly that a joke which anyone can understand should be placed on a headstone.  I don’t mean to target Winchelsea exclusively in this criticism – I’m sure it’s an attitude which prevails in country villages throughout the land. 
 
 
A 'streamlined approach' - the harvest festival display in Winchelsea Church. The oranges, lemons and bananas are, of course, locally grown. Sussex is noted for its banana production.
 

My three and a half followers may remember that I wrote a blog post back in March about the allotment we had taken on. I can now report that, having battled with rabbits, slugs, mice, caterpillars and other assorted pests, we have managed to wrest a few vegetables from this barren parcel of land. It has been a rewarding, if sometimes frustrating, experience, but I have often found myself thinking, while working, of the millions of poor farmers and smallholders throughout the world who have to support themselves and their families from similar patches of land and for whom the discovery that all their seedlings have been decimated by pests is a disaster of life-threatening proportions, not just a minor annoyance.

So I would suggest, in conclusion, that our parochial worthies with their ‘streamlined’ approach should dwell on this thought and adopt a more generous, appreciative and open-hearted attitude to this thanksgiving festival – even if it means a little inconvenience. 
 
 
Some of the produce from our allotment - maybe not shapely enough for Waitrose but delicious nonetheless
 
 
 
One of my monsters. I offered a similar one to the harvest festival but it was rejected on the grounds that it might distract the ladies of Winchelsea from their worship
 
  

12 comments:

  1. Oh how did I miss this brilliant blog post before? I so, so agree with you, Pedro. I too absolutely loved the profusion of produce in the church at Harvest Festival when I was a child, and we never had to worry about what to do with it all. We laid the roots, spuds and marrows out in the cool of a below stairs cellar and we ate everything we'd grown in the summer during the winter. We also bottled stuff. There is nothing more satisfying than succeeding in growing and eating your own food, and it's absolutely worth celebrating. Shame on the Parish Council(s) if they think bananas, lemons and oranges have anything to do with our harvest festivals!

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    1. Thanks so much for your lovely comment, Val. I know, we did the same. We were almost entirely self-sufficient and preservation skills were as important as cultivating skills - all of which has been lost in our society. I'm so glad you enjoyed the post and that we feel the same way.

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  2. A streamlined harvest festival appears to me as a contradiction. Is it not the 'bounty' we celebrate; and follow up on by the enjoyment (and necessity) of consuming? We are being removed from our roots, so to speak.

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    1. I totally agree, Dale. We've become removed from our roots in every sense and we need to find them again if we're going to save the planet. Thanks so much for commenting.

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  3. I love harvest festivals for the same reasons as you. I think the streamlined 'designer' display is dreadful. I also love all those old harvest festival hymns, so full of joy and thankfulness. And I think of how my ancestors, like many in the third world, today, faced starvation if their harvests failed. No wonder they were joyful at the abundance that nature and hard work produce.

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment, Jenny - you've hit the nail on the head. And thanks for mentioning the beautiful seasonal hymns. I so agree. Our contact with the earth is not a vague, spiritual experience but something visceral and fundamental and we need to rediscover it if we are to survive.

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  4. well done with the veg. Keep going ~ the time is soon approaching when we pensioners will not be able to afford supermarket food (nor will this country be able to afford to freight it over) so we will be back to subsistance farming. I may do 'swapsies'.

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    1. Thanks so much Carol, and thanks for commenting. Swapsies seem to happen quite naturally in the allotment community and it makes such sense. Money, after all, was just a means of facilitating bartering but now it's acquired a monstrous life of its own. We need to get back to basics.

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  5. PS My comment did not show appreciation for the humour that's here too, Pedro. Mea culpa. Koos particularly enjoyed your marrow caption...loved it all!

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    1. I be he did! Dear old Koos - he sounds such a lovely guy and so talented. I do hope we all manage to meet up before I become potting compost myself!

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  6. Fantastic post, Pedro. I wholeheartedly agree! Back to basics! I am also quite astonished by the comment that the church didn't know what to do with 'all the stuff' afterwards! Are there not people in need in the environs of Winchelsea? Could they not donate it to a charity, or use it to cook a fantastic meal in which the whole community could partake?
    But then, am I really surprised? When the western world throws away 40% of the produce they purchase every year it is clear that many of us have completely lost touch with the land.

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    1. Hmph, apparently my Wordpress login doesn't show the right name, so just so you know it's not some strange weirdo, and just a regular weirdo, it's me ;-)

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