Harvest Home

Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.

Alexander Pope 
1688-1744

Harvest Home was celebrated in Great Britain long before our American Thanksgiving. It was the custom for farm-owners to provide a feast for their laborers when the harvest had been safely gathered home.  The early settlers brought the tradition to North America, and the Pilgrims held a harvest feast in 1621.  They invited 50 or so helpful native Americans, as legend has it.  The meal was lobster, venison and whole grains (deer, corn and shellfish.)


One of the best literary examples of a rural English Harvest Home is from Thomas Hardy's novel, Far From the Madding Crowd.  The main character Bathsheba hosts a harvest dinner on her farm. In the 1967 movie version starring Julie Christy, the storm that followed the party was a climatic scene.  

Harvest Home celebrations have pagan roots in the belief in the "corn mother."  Farmers thought a spirit resided in the last sheaf of grain to be harvested, and the workers beat the grain to the ground to chase it out.  In some places people wove dried blades into a corn "dolly" that was kept safe for good luck until seed-sowing. 

On Harvest Sunday in the United States and Canada, church members brought in food from the garden or farm that was distributed among the poor and senior citizens of the local community, or used to raise funds for the church or charity. 

In Bucks County Pennsylvania, fruits and vegetables were displayed along with fall flowers and sheaves of grain at a Harvest Home in 1907-- a beautiful tradition in churches and temples around the world.

A hundred years ago in Pennsylvania Dutch country, farm women brought their best home-preserved foodstuffs to share with the less fortunate.  Now we call it a food drive, and everything comes from the grocery store.

Here's some nostalgic Harvest Home pictures to kick off this long weekend of thankfulness...