Harking back to times gone by with 'Bringing in the Sheaves' Festival at Kildarton Parish

KILDARTON Parish Church will be harking back to times gone by with a ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’ Festival on Saturday.

The day will feature traditional threshing, food and refreshments and family fun activities to raise funds for CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) and parish funds.

Explaining what the day is all about Rev David McComb at Kildarton said, “Over the last couple of years we’ve used an acre of land at the back of the church to grow sunflowers and we always had great crowds come out to that.

“This year we wanted to do something different so we planted a field of corn and about a month ago we did it old style, we cut it, we bound it and we stripped it. We had about 30 or 40 volunteers came out to help us.

“It really was to enthuse the local farming community. We had one guy came out and stood in the middle of the field with me a month ago. He said, ‘I stood in this field with my father 65 years ago doing exactly what I’m doing today’, we had lovely stories like that.

“Our plan was always to thresh it, get an old style thresher out and to thresh it and bale it. We have a couple of local farms said they could use it for horse feed and that type of thing.

“We hope to do that on Saturday - the big problem is the weather has made it hard work - but the last few dry days allowed us to get it onto a trailer and into a shed .

“So we’re going to thresh it, we’ll be starting at 11 in the morning, we’ll have three or four rounds of threshing during the day.

“We’ll be selling burgers, we’ll have some fun and some craft stuff for the kids and just make a day of it.”

It’s all part of a broader initiative within the Church of Ireland’s Armagh Diocese called ‘Flourish’. Its purpose is to get a number of parishes to start their own environmental projects.

Parishes in Dungannon, Portadown and all through the country have been taking part.

Rev McComb has been one of two people heading the scheme up for the Archbishop, “This was our input to that, to show God’s creation at work. That was really the driver behind that, as Kildarton has that acre at the back it was ideal for it .

“We have Lowry’s Lake down at the bottom of the hill, we have the trees overlooking the road. It’s a beautiful setting for the job.”

And as for what the work entails, Rev McComb confessed to being something of a ‘townie’ and added, “I’ve learned a lot of new words like ‘stooking’ and things like that which were all new to me.

“The sheaths will be brought out on the Saturday morning and we have a big old thresher - a wooden and steel contraption - and a couple of men will drop the sheaths in and it will separate the heads from the stalks and some of it will be baled and the rest will be used for feed.

“A lot of people will be around to help.

“We’ll have related crafts for the kids with corn and we’ll have hotdogs and burgers on the day.”

They had been waiting on the weather to be right so the big day was only really announced on Wednesday.

So for a taste of the past and a day learning a little bit more about life on the land don’t miss the ‘Bringing in the Sheaves Festival’ at Kildarton Parish Church, Hamiltonsbawn Road, Armagh.