Two big festivals in the Christian year celebrate food and farming: Rogation Sunday and Harvest Festival (usually the first Sundays in May and October), writes Judith Field.

Rogation Sunday is very old, dating from a pagan Roman rite. It seeks God’s blessing for crops and the land, and is associated with “beating the bounds” (walking the boundaries of a parish).

But you may be surprised to learn that Harvest Festival is much younger, and that it is a Cornish innovation that has spread around the world.

The first Harvest Festival was held on October 1, 1843 at Morwenstow church near Bude. It was started by the priest and poet Robert Stephen Hawker (1803–75) – author of the Song of the Western Men, aka Trelawny - to give thanks to God for the harvest.

The idea soon took off, incorporating a tradition of collecting food donations to share with local people. Many church congregations do this all year round now through their local food bank: for instance, in 2023 Truro Cathedral gave 459kg of non-perishable food to Truro Food Bank, equal to 765 meals.

The cathedral building has strong connections with food, farming and the countryside. One of its best-loved windows (inserted in 1907) shows a guardian angel holding a net bulging with fish above a depiction of a 19th-century fishing boat leaving Newlyn harbour. A fisherman sorts the nets while another hauls up the sail. Newlyn lighthouse is recognisable in the background.

Another Newlyn-school artwork, Annie Walke’s 1923 painting of Christ Blessing Cornish Industry features farmworkers hand-planting seeds and harvesting cabbages.

Meanwhile the modern altar in St Margaret’s Chapel, installed in March 2003, was designed by Peter Skerrett, a founder of Constantine’s Potager Garden, and made by Toby Roskilly with a glass top by Bryn Roskilly, both of the Roskilly’s dairy farming family in St Keverne on the Lizard peninsula.

Several farming families are remembered with memorials. Take the ceiling boss in St Mary’s Aisle to John Rosewarne, a director of well-known agricultural suppliers Farm Industries and an active volunteer with both Truro Cathedral and the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies. He also gave his name to an agricultural research station at Camborne - now Duchy College Rosewarne.

In the present day, the cathedral is the home of the annual County Carol Service of the Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs (YFC), and the Christmas crib has been thatched for many years by GW Viant Thatchers of Redruth.

Mothering Sunday’s daffodils come from Fentongollan Farm at St Michael Penkivel, and several private gardens donate foliage for use in the 300+ flower arrangements in the cathedral each year.

This year’s traditional Harvest Festival is at 10am on Sunday, October 6 and there is an exhibition by Cornish schools celebrating the wonders of creation until September 24. It includes lovely pictures by Portreath Primary School, inspired by Illogan Woods.

The cathedral is open daily, with no charge for entry. Find out more at www.trurocathedral.org.uk