Issue No 165
Magazine for the Irfon and Wye Valley Churches September 2014
Harvest Reality “Come, ye thankful people come, raise the song of harvest-home” - What happens if we can’t “raise the song of harvest home”? The words of that wonderful and well known Harvest hymn by Dean Henry Alford of Canterbury Cathedral, written around 1860, for me heralds the beginning of a time to give grateful thanks to God, for the earth, having given up her goodness for us human beings. September is the time of the year when we think of, to quote John Keats, the “month of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. All very cosy and dare I say whilst living in the Principality, quintessentially English!! It is also the time for everyone to give thanks for all God’s creation and his goodness to all of us. A time for Harvest Thanksgiving Services; the wonderful smell in church of all the vegetables and produce; and those magnificent tablegroaning Harvest Suppers, put on with pride by the ladies of the parish! Halcyon days indeed! It’s also a time to reminisce on harvests gone by. But for some farmers harvest is not for them around the time of corn harvest, namely July and August. Neither is it the time of harvesting the hay or silage. If you are a sheep farmer, the harvest perhaps comes just before Christmas or Easter when it is traditionally the time to eat lamb. If you are an arable farmer potatoes and sugar beet are harvested over the winter months. So harvest can be an all-year celebration. The tradition of celebrating Harvest Festival in churches began in 1843, when the Reverend Robert Hawker invited parishioners to a special thanksgiving service at his church at Morwenstow in Cornwall. This led to the custom of decorating churches with home-grown produce for the Harvest Festival service. Harvest is also a time when we remember those less fortunate as ourselves. We regularly see the plight of many thousands of people who, usually following a natural disaster will not be eating
by Reverend Richard Kirlew today! In fact their harvest for the coming months has been completely decimated or did not germinate in the first place. We have to also remember areas where war is occurring and at the time of writing our TV screens are overflowing with horrific images coming out of Gaza and Iraq.
But we must remember that the decimation that affects people overseas can happen here in the UK and particularly in Wales at the moment. This is decimation in a different way perhaps, but none the less present. Now as the Rural Officer for the Diocese and National Lead on Rural Affairs, you would not be surprised to learn that I meet a lot of farmers in the course of my work. One such farmer however will not be having such a good harvest in the truest sense. His plight is so common among cattle producers in Wales. He has had one TB “reactor” in his herd of cattle, many of which he was on the point of selling. Because of this he has had to shut his farm down for sales and await a further test in sixty days time. In the meantime he has many thousands of pounds locked up because he cannot sell any of the cattle on his farm. (Continued on page 4)
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