Today is Michaelmas, the Feast of St Michael and All Angels. As I walk past the little village church of that same name, with its plough beside the door and farmworkers buried outside, the nuts lie thick on the lane. A muesli of hazel and beechnuts makes a hard, satisfying crack underfoot. A covering of acorns has been milled to a coarse, greeny-white flour by passing tyres.
As one of the four “quarter days” near to each solstice, Michaelmas was traditionally a time of endings and beginnings on farms, when workers were hired, rents due and leases or sales of farms transacted. This can still be felt. On the quiet days of a September freshening, when even the rooks soften their calls, a brief holiday ease is acknowledged before the battle with the elements begins.
Agricultural shows and events also mark this quarter-pause, some, perhaps, without knowing. Our own Michaelmas funfair, Marlborough “mops”, and goose fairs once upon a time will have thronged with people advertising their trade, carrying a pitchfork or mop, breast-pocket handkerchief replaced by wool or straw. They also had their “freshers” revelry, including the gifting of a stubble goose for prosperity, fattened on harvest gleanings, nuts and the autumn flush of grass.
That gifting may be a distant tradition now, but farmyard geese have endured on the local lanes. For many years, Bell Lane couldn’t be negotiated without an escort of indignant honkers, protecting their share of the fallen nuts and berries. The late Bob May, a village stalwart and “character”, kept a flock that was more fearsome than guard dogs. He once ambushed me with the gift of a big, chalky goose egg, saying, “Now run along to scramble it”, sending us laughing to our opposite ends of the lane. When he was buried, his grave was castled all around by goose feathers stuck in the soil.
Nearby Manor Farm has also had a notable flock for many years. The originals arrived on Michaelmas 1941, a moment that was marked by a new farmer, Miss Julia White. “Geese are blissful; if troublesome,” she wrote. Today, their successors guard the farm like bouncers, stopping cars, walkers, prams, horses, cyclists. None shall pass. And none shall be eaten.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is out now; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
• Nicola Chester’s new book, Ghosts of the Farm, is out now
