The Two Sides of the Harvest.

The sound I could hear coming across the fields this evening was unmistakably this year’s first sound of the harvest being gathered in. It struck me that there was a time, when diets were far simpler and communities more self-reliant, when the harvest was a joyous occasion because it meant that the community would be fed for the following year.

Matters are very much changed now. Our eating habits are not about survival any more, but about choice and lifestyle. And so much of what we eat is imported. The main thing to celebrate now is that the farmer’s income has been maintained for another season.

But one thing hasn’t changed: the knowledge that the harvest is the most telling of signs that summer is entering its last lap before dying into darker days and colder nights. Therein lies the ambivalence, a word I seem to be using a lot lately. And for all that both spring and summer this year have been gloriously sunny and warm so far, it seems to me to have raced past at a faster pace than ever.