I was brought up in the rural East Riding of Yorkshire. In those days, the farms still came down into the villages themselves and the farmers’ houses were surrounded by barns, haystacks, agricultural machinery. Because of its arable crops, the East Riding is known also for its husbandry of pigs. Until new housing started to push the farms out of our village itself, we lived close to pigs. Fifty yards or so away. Over the farm wall. (They’re intelligent creatures.) The sights, sounds and, sometimes, smells of farming life were all around us.
Inevitably we celebrated harvest-home every year. Every year at the appointed time, the churches would fill with farm produce, much specially baked for the occasion. And the farmers would be dragged by their wives into church: maybe the only time in the year that they came. My twin brother and I used to sing in the choir. We had a great organist and the rector would train the treble and soprano voices himself after school, pulling out of his cassock an old descant recorder to find the pitch and, when necessary, melody for us. The size of the children’s part of the choir varied: we were usually around eight to ten voices. The adults were good: one of the farmers’ wives had the most beautiful and trained soprano voice. We had tenor, bass and alto singers too. So, though a small rural parish, we could easily do part-singing. At harvest and other important festivals, we would belt out – with gusto and some skill – Stanford’s great setting of Psalm 150: O praise God in his holiness, praise Him in the firmament of his power.
But we were also loaned out. I remember the excitement of travelling in the inky black and autumnal chill of the night to sing at evensong harvest festivals in the churches of Skipsea, closer to the coast than we lived, and Sigglesthorne. At Skipsea the harvest suppers were particularly memorable and lavish. I must have been nine or ten at the time but I remember them well. We could certainly sing to match the occasion and the farming communities were kind to us for our efforts. The food was great.
It feels a long time ago now and my life has become very urban. But like most who can trace their generations back through parish registers and census records in England, I know that my ancestors once worked the land for their living, as labourers and small-scale tenant farmers: in Norfolk and, by the mid-nineteenth century, Lincolnshire. Several were non-conformist preachers too. My great-great grandfather, Benjamin, was a tenant farmer in Fulstow, north Lincolnshire and a mechanical engineer, manufacturing and selling corn-dressers in his home county and in Yorkshire (corn-dressers separated wheat from chaff). He died in 1888 and his interest in the farm was sold, along with all the farm equipment. His youngest son, my great-grandfather, Walter, was apprenticed as a butcher but himself became a tenant farmer, and was farming in south Lincolnshire until his death in 1933. He's my last direct connection with the land. Twelve years ago, I found myself – perhaps surprisingly – running the exotic animal disease unit at DEFRA. It was fun, as part of my duties, to visit farms and talk to farmers, about bluetongue controls and other such measures. An all too brief reconnection with my childhood in the East Riding and with my ancestors’ farming history.
Harvest-home, then, is always a thoughtful and necessary time for me, even in the city. Last Sunday, we weren’t, of course, able to sing the great Victorian hymns of harvest thanksgiving: We plough the fields and scatter and Come ye thankful people come. The pandemic has put paid to all congregational singing – for the time being at least. But the words still echoed in my mind, easily recalled from childhood: Come thou Church triumphant come / Raise the song of harvest-home / All be safely gathered in, / Free from sorrow, free from sin, / There forever purified / In God’s garner to abide / Come ten thousand angels come / Raise the glorious harvest-home.
Amen to that.
John
24 October 2020
