There Was Always a Cat

Harvest Thanksgiving

This was always a joyous, meaningful celebration to those who worshipped at Cowra Road Methodist Church. All were farming folk who produced a lot of what they ate and needed the money from the sale of wool and wheat to pay for all the other things required.

On the Saturday afternoon, Elaine and I would accompany Dad on a trip to the Chinese market gardeners who would give us some of their produce to add to the display. Their garden was on the left bank of the Brundah Creek, before crossing on the road to Brundah Falls. I always kept pretty close to Dad while there and we didn’t go inside the building they had, but some very alien smells seemed come forth from it.

Then in the evening people would come to the church with their offerings, choosing their best of course. In front of the pulpit, tables were set up in tiers to display the fruits to their best advantage; perhaps sheaves of wheat at the sides, bigger things like pumpkins and watermelons on the floor. When we were really little, Elaine and I would be given a piece of cloth to help by polishing apples so they would look lovely and shiny. Then all was arranged, grapes prominent, and a loaf of bread and jug of water were placed in the centre as symbols of our basic needs.

On Sunday at 2pm and again at night, as we entered the church we were greeted by the combined aromas of grain, vegetables, fruit and flowers:

[Pause, take a deep breath and breathe it in!]

And didn’t we lift up our voices and sing, led by my grandmother Charlotte and Aunty Mavis, who both possessed lovely clear voices.

The hymns in the Harvest section of the Methodist Hymn Book were wonderful, for example, No. 962:

Come, ye thankful people, come, Raise the song of harvest home:

All is safely gathered in, Ere the winter storms begin;

God our Maker doth provide For our wants to be supplied:

Come to God’s own temple, come, Raise the song of harvest home.’