COUNTRY LIFE
Harvest Festivals
The Harvest Festivals, celebrated most aesthetically in country churches, have taken on some likeness to the festivals of an earlier century, when the folk fed through the winter on local grain, and a poor harvest meant a tightened belt. Beside the sheaves and model thatched stack was an exceptional quantity of vegetables and fruits. According to a happy practice all these were carried off a day later to the local hospital ; but their number and excellence were a sign that the village was growing its own winter supplies. We become to our great benefit more local, and understand that those who have grown a good store of roots will be assured of a well fed winter. One of the worst drawbacks of an advancing civilisation has been the delocalising of industry. Even in small remote hamlets, where fanning land is at a discount, the local greengrocer often gets his stale and insufficient vegetables and fruit from Covent Garden. This year's Harvest Thanksgiving was offered, as decorations on floor and window ledge suggested, for better gardens and allotments as well as for wider tilths. The Women's Institutes, if they will forgive the comparison, are full of Candides. They not only cultivate their gardens ; they preserve the produce. No room is more comelily furnished than a kitchen or living-room whose many shelves are heavy with bottled or jarred produce, or than an outhouse festooned with onions along the walls, hummocked over the floor with well-strawed potatoes and well sanded carrots. Sometimes use is a maker of the beauty with which it is too often contrasted.
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