The harvest has always been the climax of the farming year. When this programme was first made, men in their eighties and nineties were able to recall harvests from before the First World War. They demonstrated the use of the scythe and the flail and showed how horses were used to power a range of implements including an early reaper, a sail-cutter and a binder.
They talked about how companionable harvests were before the combine, the role of the Harvest Lord, the horkey, with its boiled beans and pork supper, and how everyone from pensioner to schoolchild turned out to lend a hand. Then there was the steam threshing, providing work for men in the winter.
This is a portrait of an almost forgotten age, re-told by the last generation who took part in it and brought to life with archive film and accurate re-stagings created by the Anglia Bygones team, led by Dick Joice.
Originally made and broadcast in 1975 as part of the Bygones series on Anglia Television, the programme was devised and scripted by Geoffrey Weaver..