Combines roll and Lammas loaf is baked

THIS Sunday, in the village church, there is a Lammas service. Similar services will be held around the country to mark the start of harvest and the baking of the first loaf with newly harvested grain.

Most people connect the Christian celebration of harvest with Harvest Festival – but that occurs much later in the autumn when everything is safely gathered in.

As anyone who has been out and about in the countryside knows, the combines have been rolling for a couple of weeks or more in many parts of the West Country and the wheat harvest has started in several parts of the region.

Lammas also marks a link between Christian festivals and those celebrated before Christianity when the beginning of August coincided with the festival of Lugh or Lug, the Celtic Sun King.

According to experts of the period, feasting, market fairs, games and bonfires took place around this time.

The legend of John Barleycorn is also linked to the start of the grain harvest, with connections not just to bread, but also to beer, made from barley. There are pubs up and down the country called the John Barleycorn.

In the fields hereabouts much of the grain and oilseeds have already been harvested. Drizzle earlier in the week meant the wheat harvest was paused, but with the sun back out and drying the standing corn, it will only be a matter of time before it all starts up again.

It’s not just the grain that is valuable to farmers. Straw is an importance resource and massive bales are being hauled away, some impaled on the giant spikes of the telehandler and others loaded onto trailers.

The hedgerows on the narrow lanes carry a mantle of straw at the moment – losses from the trailer loads passing by, that get caught on the thorns and overhanging branches.

The relatively swift change in the look of the countryside, from fields of swaying crops to short and spikey stubbles is as dramatic as any alteration to the landscape. The dog, for weeks confined to a narrow path bounded on one side by a thick hedge and the other by almost impenetrable crops, can now wander into the stubble and sniff new ground.

How long it stays that way, before the plough moves in and prepares the ground for new planting remains to be seen. Farmers are encouraged, for the benefit of wildlife, to keep land under stubbles for the winter, but many need to get the ground working again quickly, to produce more food for next year and the production of more Lammas loaves.