The Harvester Ghost Figurine - Asta

The Harvesters appear only after the first grain has been cut.

Old Lammas records speak of pale figures emerging at dusk from the newly shorn fields, where the standing wheat had concealed them throughout the growing season. They are seldom witnessed before the final cart has departed. By then, only stubble, scattered husks and the long shadows of the harvest remain.

Earlier custodians believed the Harvesters kept account of all that had been gathered and all that had been left behind. They were treated neither as omens nor intruders, but as quiet witnesses to the turning year: spirits of labour completed, stores replenished and the first promise that winter might yet be endured.

Their appearance marks the opening of the harvest season at Lammas. They remain only briefly, vanishing as the fields are cleared and the late-summer nights begin to lengthen.

Asta was first recorded beside the harvest bell on an evening when its rope had broken before the final reaper returned from the field.

She remained beneath it until the missing worker crossed the boundary at dusk, though no hand was seen to ring the bell that guided him home. Old records associate Asta with the calling-in of those who labour beyond sight and with the warning that grain cut after the final bell belongs to the field, not the granary.

Asta the ghost figurine is just short of 9 cm in height.