The first weekend in October was when the parish celebrated our harvest. Even though the weather during the summer was, to say the least, “interesting” we survived and there was a harvest. In the parish we have always had a Harvest Festival service in St Bartholomew’s church and this year was no exception. Having said that, this year was somewhat different as it was the inaugural Harvest Supper. Sincere apologies to all who couldn’t attend as places were limited and it was a sell-out. The best suggestion is to book early next year. We definitely had a weekend to remember. It is good to know that many of those at the Saturday night supper made it back to the Sunday morning service where the singing just about raised the roof!
Before the weekend the church was decorated with some amazing floral creations. Being an “Eco” award church and the birthplace of Sustainable Church Flowers “https://suschurchflowers.com” there was a concerted effort to reduce the carbon footprint in getting the fruit and flower to the church. As one of the volunteers put it, “you can’t get much less than direct from my garden to the church”. I have to apologise that the following pictures don’t do justice to how beautiful the church looked.
Just so you don’t bombard the administrator with questions; the spiky looking things on the pulpit are the seed heads of the allium “Schubertii” that were grown in Harpley.
I did mention that we had the inaugural Harvest Supper this year. A great “thank you” has to go to Clare Edwards and her hard-working team who made this event happen. Luckily, most of the people in the local community like beef because there was a lot of it, and I mean a LOT. Don’t get me wrong, the vegetarians were also catered for. The selection of cheeses was so good that a queue formed whilst people tried to make up their minds which cheeses to have. Not surprisingly, the dessert table was also a popular place. As for anyone on a diet, I’m fairly sure it went out of the window on that night. To round things off there was even an after-dinner speaker when Henry Carpenter informed us of a few of the tales he’d come across, growing up in the area.
This was Saturday night when St Bartholomew’s church was generously being used as the Lower Sapey “Community Hub”. Thanks to the many helpers, it was returned to its original setting ready for Sunday morning worship.