Of rain, more rain and a harvest yet to come

I am hoping that we do not have a repeat of the summer and autumn of 1848. 

The year had begun fine enough with “a cold and frosty January which became milder”, but then the rain set in.  We “had three wet months and while May was cold and dry and July fine and hot, August was excessively wet and the rain fell in abundance again in October.”  All of which meant that it was “a wet harvest with yields below average” and “much wheat badly sprouted, barley variable; oats a poor crop.”*

Now today with a Morrison’s just minutes away and convience stores in between plus Unicorn it is easy to see the wet weather as just what stops you sitting in the garden enjoying the sun. But this is to miss the point that there are still many, many people dependant on good weather to secure a decent income for the year.

It was there on Radio 4 with farmers expressing concern for the harvest and again in a conversation we had with the owner of a winery in Yorkshire on Saturday who needed the weather to remain warm dry and sunny for the next six weeks.


“So how much more so for the people who lived here in the middle of the 19th century.  After all 96 of our families were engaged in some form of farming and so a good harvest would put food on the table, guarantee work for the many and help the village through the dark cold winter a head.  Equally important for the sixteen families who made their living as tradesmen and retailers the harvest was central to their fortunes.  Only the gentry might be more relaxed at the weather.  But even they would have been aware of the distress and possible social unrest which might follow a bad year in the fields. 
The families of plenty would have drawn the connection between the bad harvests in France in the last century and the Revolution which toppled a monarchy and unleashed a continental war which lasted twenty-three years.  Closer to home and at the beginning of their own century there had been food riots in Manchester,   and it was only nineteen years since the rising of the agricultural workers against mechanization and falling wages which had been fuelled by the poor harvest of 1829 in the south and east of the country.”  **

And as always it would have been those with least that might be most hit.  Poor weather meant little work for agricultural workers and poor yields for our market gardeners who supplied the markets of Manchester.  Some farmed just an acre of land and while they were highly productive there was very little margin for getting by even in a good year.

All very different from 1846 which had seen a very dry and cold winter with less than an inch of rain  followed by a summer which proved to be very hot and led to a plentiful harvest.

As it was, the wheat harvest of 1847 was also plentiful if of a poor quality, but the oat crop which was our main one was but average leaving only the barley as a good crop for the year.

So looking out on the garden with the grapes on the vine beginning to show, the hop plants spreading across the back wall and I am drawn back to reflecting on the weather and the weather to come.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Stratton, J.M., Agricultural Records 1969
** Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, due out later in the year