Looking back at harvest time in rural Somerset.
Our region has long been shaped by our ties with the agricultural and food industry and harvest time has always been an important time of year. We spoke to Beth Jarrett from the Somerset Rural Life Museum who gave us an insight into our rural history…
“For Somerset’s rural communities a century and more ago gathering the harvest was the most important activity of the food and farming year. Men, women and children worked together in a common effort as they first brought in the hay, and then the corn and other crops. Everyone knew that a successful harvest meant food and prosperity for the whole community.
Schoolrooms in June and July were typically half empty. Children stayed at home minding brothers and sisters so their parents could go out haymaking. Then later, during the corn harvest, they stayed away again while their mothers helped with the stitching, or stooking (hand-baling the sheaves of cut grain stalks).
Many children themselves took a hand in harvest work and even the youngest could help with gleaning (gathering leftover grain) after the crop was gathered. Mothers would shepherd their children through the fields to collect the fallen grain which the farmers allowed them to have.
Wheat and barley were the main crops in Victorian and Edwardian Somerset, though there were smaller quantities of oats, roots, peas and beans. But nothing was more characteristic of Somerset than its apple orchards or the sight of cider presses working through the autumn days.
In the 1800s cider apples such as the Golden Pippin, the Red Streak, the White Sour and the Kingston Black were celebrated local varieties and helped to make Somerset the most famous cider-producing county in England.
Once the apples were harvested they were ground into a ‘pumice’ using an apple mill, then crushed in a great wooden press between layers of straw which formed the ‘cheese’. A farmer needed cider for his own use but also for his labourers. As every farmer knew, good cider attracted the best workers. Most farms had a cider house for making and keeping cider and the labourers would go there to collect their daily ration.
Traditional apple mills, cider presses, reap hooks and scythes offer an insight into the sort of equipment used during the harvest season. Large medieval-built barns became hubs of activity – a space which was often the heart of the harvest period and all the farming communities at this time of year. At harvest time heavily-laden wagons would enter through huge doorways so that sheaves of corn could be unloaded and stacked high to the roof.
During autumn and winter, these barns were used for threshing the crops. Before mechanisation, threshing flails were used to separate the ears of corn from the straw. An intentional through-draught was often created between two doors that would gently separate the grain from the lighter chaff in the process called winnowing.
The barn was also the setting for the celebration that marked the end of the harvest season. In 1880 James Austin, the farmer at Abbey Farm, now home to the Somerset Rural Life Museum, presided in the barn at the harvest supper he provided for his workers. Much cider was drunk and food eaten. Then, a fiddler played and they danced until darkness fell.”
Living History Day
November 5 2017
Visit the Somerset Rural Life Museum and experience a living history of the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of ancient rural skills and crafts. From woodworking to weaving and cookery to corn dollies, a visit will be like stepping into the past.
For more information, visit: www.swheritage.org.uk/rural-life-museum