A MEDIEVAL YEAR IN ENGLAND:
SEPTEMBER

The corn (think various grains, not American maize on its cobs) harvest that began in August goes on. As the fieldwork and drying finish, the crop is loaded into carts or baskets well-lined enough to allow the loss of very little of the grain on the rough tracks from fields to home and storage. This is Harvest Home, and the last load reaching the barn signals the time for the great harvest feast at the lord of the manor’s expense if this has been his bidreap, or by the corn’s owner for the workers he has hired.

Much of the corn is stored still in-the-ear, to be threshed in the coming wet weather, on threshing floors in large barns. A barn dance on the threshing floor at harvest’s end serves no only for celebration but to smooth and flatten the earth for the threshing to come. The barns are built for good lighting and to catch the wind because winnowing will follow threshing, and the wind serves to carry away the chaff while the seeds, being heavier, mostly fall near the winnower and are carefully sorted through by hand for seed corn to be saved for planting next year.

With the harvest done and stored, the gleaners are allowed into the fields. A family working hard can gather enough left-grain for porridge or bread. Then the Michaelmas geese and other poultry are turned into the stubble to eat any remaining fallen grain. The stover – the standing straw left from harvest – is cut and stored for winter fodder as quickly as may be, lest rain or cattle get to it first. Any green growth among the stubble is afterward grazed off, first by cows, then more closely by sheep, that nothing goes to waste. The straw not used for fodder is used as thatch (though it is not the best material for that), and for straw ropes to be wound into household furnishings such as rugs and hassocks, bed-mats to be used alone or under feather beds for extra warmth, and such things as baskets, hampers, beehives, and bottle-covers.

There are other harvests, too.

is an old saying, expressing hope there be no storms until the orchards have been cleared. Beehives that were properly cared for in the summer should now give up their honey and wax, to be used for sweetening in cooking, curing hams, preserving fruit, making of candles, and for sale at the autumn Honey Fairs.

The series of autumn fairs that began in August continue, with livestock fairs common as people decide what stock they will be able to keep over the winter, depending on whether haying and harvest have been good or ill. What cannot be sold or kept fed through the coming months will have to be slaughtered and the meat preserved. Or if the year has been good, now is the chance to increase the herd.

For shepherds this is tupping time – breeding ewes for next year’s crop.

In the fields, as soon as the last gleaning and grazing are done, plowing starts again, to ready the fields for planting of winter wheat and rye before the autumn rains begin.

September 8th commemorates the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, with a week of various observances before it.

September 14th is Holyrood Day, celebrating the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and a holiday from school and work if possible. Custom holds this to be the day to go nutting, harvesting nuts for the coming year. The following Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday are Ember Days, for fasting or abstinence.

The hunters’ time of grace from June comes to an end today. For two more weeks the roebuck is in season and it is said that “If the buck rises with a dry horn on Holyrood morn, it is the sign of a Michaelmas summer,” meaning fair weather before the equinoctial storms.

September 29th is Michaelmas – the feast of St. Michael the Archangel (with “and All Angels” a later addition). This is a Quarter Day, when rents come due, the year’s accounts are rendered to your lord, and new leases and servants’ hiring contracts begun. Agreements on land are made or ended or renewed. In towns this is often the election day for officers. In London and Middlesex the sheriffs elected last June are sworn into office for the coming year.

For hunters from now until June is closed season on harts and bucks, but open season begins on hares, and on hinds and roes until Candlemas in February.

Bird-netting also begins, and the geese so gladly fattened on the harvested fields are supposed to be eaten now because

But do not eat blackberries again this year because the Devil is supposed to wave his club over the bushes today and curse them.

- Margaret