Week of Winnowing

The sunset has faded, there's but a tinge,
Saffron pale, where a star of white
Has tangled itself in the trailing fringe
Of the pearl-grey robe of the summer night.

Oh! the green of the barley fields grows deep,
The breath of the barley fields grows rare;
There is rustle and glimmer, sway and sweep--
The wind is holding high revel there,

Singing the song it has often sung;
Hark to the troubadour glad and bold:
"Sweet is the earth when the summer is young
And the barley fields are green and gold!"
Jean Blewett, The Barley Fields

It is harvest week in the Lanark Highlands, and the air is full of the grumbling music and diesel scents of harvesters plying their slow way through the fields; cutting the grain, winnowing, baling and gathering it all in. There are old fashioned stooks and bales both round and square in the fields, tidy heaps of straw and row upon row of piled wheat, oats, alfalfa, clover and barley all through the countryside. Once again, John Barleycorn and the spirit of the grain harvest are renewing a brief but happy pastoral acquaintance with their mechanical August companions, John Deere and Massey Ferguson.

I am thankful for the riches of the field which will sustain us in the coming winter, but in some measure, the first week of August is always a week of mourning for me. All season long, I have watched the grain in the Lanark fields growing high, blowing about in the summer wind and turning golden under the sun - I delighted in every field and stalk and frond I encountered, and now it is all being cut down and taken away. I shall miss it all, particularly the wheat, the oats and the barley.