Forgotten Harvest Celebrations

There was a time when Harvest was the great festival of the year.

The Victorians brought in the sheaves with singing and church bells, decorated their homes with wheat, apples and hazelnuts, and sat down to harvest suppers knowing — truly knowing — that a good crop meant a warm winter and a failed one meant hunger.

Harvest Home, Harvest Thanksgiving, or Lammas they called it: the celebration that said we have enough, and we know exactly where the food comes from. Now that our supermarkets stock every fruit in every season, and cargo planes fly in kiwis from other continents as if the seasons had been abolished, we have quietly lost sight of that knowledge....and that good feeling.

When food comes from everywhere, gratitude for food comes from nowhere.

Yet recovering a little of that feeling is beautifully simple. Put a lovely tray or wooden bowl on your dining table, and fill it with local harvest products: apples, pears, plums, walnuts, a small pumpkin, a sheaf of grain, late blackberries. Then say thank-you  to the soil that carried the roots, the farmer who dispersed the seeds, the trees that grew the fruit, the rain that fell at the right moments, and the countless insects that pollinated the blossoms. This was Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh way of mindfulness.  No ritual is required, no guests, no effort beyond the arranging.

It is a tiny celebration. But an important one: a moment of noticing that our food is not manufactured, but grown — by a web of soil, weather, patient people and small buzzing workers.

Do not underestimate how quickly the old seasonal anchors slip away. When your children are grown, there are no more apple-picking visits to the orchard, and you find yourself driving past pumpkin patches in a hurry — on your way to the supermarket, where pumpkins arrive ready-carved.

So take this small moment now. Be, for a while, in the here and now. Set out your harvest tray, say your quiet thanks, and enjoy a sweet and minimalist Harvest Celebration — the kind that leaves you with time to taste the apple. 

Marga van der Vet & Paula Kuitenbrouwer

~Your Handmade Luxury Home Harvest Team~

Appels in Blue Koi Carp Dish with Butterfly, an oil painting by Paula Kuitenbrouwer