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Viewpoint from Rev Rosie Bunn 29/09/2023
 Rev Rosie Bunn
Rector of All Saints Church, Belton
and
St Peter & St Paul Church, Burgh Castle
For many churches and schools around this time, it is the gathering for Harvest Festival celebrations. In years past an abundance of freshly grown fruit and vegetables would be brought to church, the buildings decorated with flowers and corn and many people came along to join in that thanksgiving. Harvest teas and suppers were often opportunities for great fun, music and dancing, and even on occasion an auction of the produce given. Talking to some of the elderly residents of a local residential care home, recently, I discovered that Harvest was hard work for many, but also great fun
Now a day's, harvest offerings are more likely to be tins of bean or tomatoes and packets of breakfast cereal or pasta, which are then handed on to local foodbanks
 In practice, we have seen the wheat and barley and the pea harvests gathered in by the farmers quite some time ago, so much so that the fields that were full of produce have since been ploughed or prepared and some are beginning to sprout green shoots for next year’s harvest. On the other hand, the apples and pears are ripening and will be due for picking in the next week or so. If you are a lover of strawberries, that season is also long gone (unless you are prepared to accept fruit that lacks the sweet ripe taste of our local berries)
I have been thinking recently about how the importance of harvest is much removed from our daily lives, and so any connection with Harvest Festival or Harvest Thanksgiving is often difficult to make. Yes, we see the combines working in the field but very few of us are involved in the production of grain, fruit and veg, or the rearing of animals for the food chain. Going shopping, we are able to pick from the shelves food that we can afford, and there is always something available
 Recently my husband, Tim, and I travelled to Malawi to see family and meet the newest member of our family. We had a wonderful time there, but we noticed a change in the cost and availability of food. We saw many trees being “trimmed” which would then be taken away by the people, who then made it into charcoal, before returning it to the city to be sold as a cheap fuel. The local people were very resourceful at finding commodities to sell along the roadside; fruit, vegetables, local foodstuffs. What horrified us was that on numerous occasions we saw young boys and men selling what we called “mouse kebabs”; large and small mice skewered and offered as food. On previous visits to that country we had never seen this before. We were told that it was an indication of the struggles the area was having with production of food and poor or insufficient harvests (as well as the national economic situation)
I am so thankful that I have never been that hungry! During my life I have known what it is to have so much, and to have very little, but there has always been something nourishing and pleasant to eat – even if it was beans on toast more frequently than I might have liked. There are so many pressures in life that can lead us to want to grumble; perhaps looking for things that we might be thankful for will help us appreciate what we do have
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