Fall: Season of Mellow Fruitfulness

The picture on the right reminds me a little of Harvest Festivals in our local parish church in Devon, England, when I was a child. The difference is that Devon is a very rural county and there was far more produce given for the Harvest Festival service. Later, it would be given to those in need.

This seems to be a worldwide tradition and, in mainland Europe, the arrangement of harvest produce can be intricate and beautiful as you can see below.

I love making jam (preserves) and marmalade. I find it immensely satisfying converting excess fruit that we just couldn't eat fresh into something we can eat for months to come. I feel much the same about making pickles and chutneys too. It's good to do something that is so traditional - a task that people, usually women, have undertaken for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. It gives me a real feeling of continuity.

Just like most people, I have a modern freezer and I make the desserts and cakes with autumn fruit too. Not as traditional as making jam and canning but still very useful and frugal. Why waste food when there is such an easy way to preserve it for later use?

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.