Around this time, every Primary School in the land turns to its beleaguered external Music Teacher (or, if nothing else, that poor naive young teacher who won the Christmas Party Karaoke rendition and has now been named Music Coordinator) to prepare for the Harvest festival.
They find the plastic box, unopened over the previous 11 months, and filled with year-old crepe paper autumn leaves, mouldy conkers, and a rather interesting fungus smell, and dig out the battered photocopy of the lyrics to ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ and ‘Cauliflowers fluffy’ ready to remind children, many of whom have only been alive for five cycles of the seasons, that fruit and veg can only be picked during certain months, and they should be bloomin’ thankful for it.
(Although who they are thanking is rather questionable. For most, it’s probably the lady in Lidl, or the team in Tescos).
There may be the chance that you are reading this and not a parent at Cransley. Maybe, you may have sat through a church service, assembly or similar, heard the usual songs, poetry recitals (many of which you sang as a child yourself), and watched Reception dressed up as yawning tomatoes, wondering whether it’s worth taking two hours of your working day to watch your darling child see how far they can stick some straw up their nose.
We do things slightly differently at Cransley. (I do love those words).
So, the Junior School staff meeting mid-September probably went like this:
“Hmm. That’s what everyone else does. What can we do better?” (Practically the Junior School’s mission statement.)
“Is the tractor still around? Last I saw it was coughing away in the front field.”
“I’ll have a chat. Greame can fit it in those doors. Always fun to watch.”
“Let’s put twinkly lights on it this time. And use it to display our donation to WODAC?”
“Great idea. Food?”
“Soup and rolls. Soup entirely made from vegetables they have grown themselves from seed on the farm. Seed to Soup. Bread rolls from Bidvest.”
“Excellent. Shame about the rolls. Next year maybe. Year 6 can serve our parents. Let’s get them all mixed up so they can chat with new parents from other year groups in the Gym. Big long tables, like in Hogwarts.”
“Well, let’s get the parents to do some hard labour beforehand. Build their appetite. Dungarees not yoga pants; Put those Barbour coats and Hunter wellies to some proper use. No Burbury and Gucci here!”
“Too right. Let’s get them ploughing the field alleys and scattering those good seeds.”
“Sounds like a song to me…”
“A bit of hard labour won’t harm them. Crack on even if it's raining?”
“Of course! Better and better. Next? Some vital existential meaning? What do our kids and their parents need to know?”
“We have to get some serious messages across… who wants to go first?”
“Climate change for us.”
“Use of pesticides and herbicides, here”
“Mycology for Year 2!”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. They loved it last year, investigates their biochemical properties, and how humans use them, while also examining their role in medicine, industry, and ecology. I bet every Year 3 could tell their oysters from their giant puffballs.”
“I’ll do the water cycle, if you are going to do how we use our labs to test the soil for the best growth.”
“Condensation and stuff?”
“Much better. Year 1 have been identifying cloud types with special viewers and have learned to predict what the weather will do over the coming hours. We could teach the parents.”
“Magic. Science, speaking and listening, maths, personal development, confidence and enterprise, wider understanding of the world, ecology, geography, sense of community. Awesome. Reception?”
“Can we dress up and sing a song?”
“Always. It wouldn’t be a Harvest Festival without it.”