This year we held a number of Harvest celebrations in our Parish.  Starting with a Harvest BCP Communion at St Mary’s Avington on 30th September and a harvest All Age Service at St Mary’s Easton on Sunday 7th October and our principal Harvest Festival Parish Communion at St John’s Itchen Abbas on 14th October followed by our Harvest Lunch at Itchen Abbas and Avington Village Hall and a Harvest Evensong at St Swithun’s Martyr Worthy that evening.

At the Parish Communion and Evensong Harvest Festivals, we were fortunate to be joined by our local farmers Robert Stent, Michael Gray and Robert Sutcliffe who read lessons and, in a new approach to harvest festivals, we all showed our appreciation by applause for the work that they do during the year to get the harvest in so that we can eat – particularly relevant in the context of Brexit and the potential cutting of some ties of globalisation!

All our four churches were beautifully decorated on the Harvest theme and many thanks are due to the many people who spent a lot of time in doing this.  Thank you also to all those who brought items for the Winchester Basics Bank and the Winchester Night Shelter.

Here are some photographs of the arrangements at St Mary’s Easton including Judy Bishop’s amazing decoration of the font:

and at St Swithun’s Martyr Worthy:

ad St John’s Itchen Abbas:

and then we had this amazing lunch…organised by Tony Gaster – thank you! It is the one time of year when everyone in the congregation and community can get together (across the four villages) and get to know each other better.  We had just under 50 people present and it would be wonderful if next year we might attract a few more.  Thank you so much to Jill Croft who again did total wonders organising and cooking the delicious food for us all and thank you also to Vanessa Rosewell, Julie Taylor, Gail Mann, Gerry Stacey, Vernon Tottle, John and Elizabeth Bouldin, Andrew Impey, Robin Greenwood and Amanda Seymour all of whom contributed to the food or wine for the lunch.  Thank you also to Tim Clapp for organising toys for the children.

Some photos follow:

Thank you so much to everyone who was involved.

Alex