Happy harvest!

The first harvest festival I ever saw was in an old church in the north Otago township of Hampden. The elderly and ever so kindly woman I was visiting needed some help carrying the bottles of preserved pears she was donating for the harvest display and in helping her I got the opportunity to see how the older generation marked the autumn and the season of plenty. There were freshly picked apples: pippins, russets and codlins, orange and blue pumpkins, sacks of potatoes, leeks as thick as your arm, enormous cabbages, dark-skinned beetroot; everything a good garden and orchard produces. Most striking were the preserves: jars and jars of bottled fruits, chutneys, jams and jellies. It was a marvellous sight and one that made me realise that these people were not only happy to share the enjoyment of the harvest, but were also very thankful for it.

Some 30 years later, I’ve been fortunate in being able to share in that same enjoyment of the bounty of the season. The Heritage Harvest Festival held in Riverton recently, was all that the one at Hampden had been, and more. Not only was there the colour and fragrance of vegetables from the garden, fruit from the orchard and even grains from the field, there was the tang of cider and the sweet smell of honey mead and the refreshing fizz of elderflower champagne to mark the harvest and demonstrate the many ways Southlanders make use of the fruits of the season. Entries for the harvest display came from all over Southland and many heritage tomatoes and potatoes were brought in by gardeners who value and maintain the old varieties. Many of the rare varieties were shared out by those gardeners to new growers, keen to keep the varieties going. The children too had pitched in and made vegetable people and fruit animals, everything that can be made from a carrot or a marrow or a oddly-shaped potato. The Heritage harvest festival was a wonderful reminder that we are very lucky to be living in a rich and fertile part of the world amongst people who still hold to traditional ways that are good.