After Harvest
It is " after harvest " now, and they are doing those things about the farms that are done when harvest is in and the rickyard tidy, the Dutch barn full. " Time to have a wander round and see if the partridges are still there," I heard one farmer say. " We got all the corn in without so much as a lying ear or a wet sheaf." The autumn nip is in the air, and the last of the blackberries are ripening fast. The elderberries droop with the weight of the crop, but few people bother to pick them, even to flavour a boiling of apples, for the taste of the wood is strong in an elderberry. There is that odd confusion of taste and smell that makes one say, " This tastes like the smell of an elderberry tree." During the war people sometimes dried a few and used them as a substitute for currants, but they were only currants in that they were shrivelled and black. The thing to do with elder- berries is to make wine, but who has the sugar for such extravagance today—unless a colony of bees dies ?
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