The Harvester Ghost Figurine - Kaleb

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.

Kaleb was first recorded upon a threshing floor, after the barn doors had been opened to the evening wind.

As the grain was cast into the air, the chaff blew beyond the threshold but Kaleb remained beside the sound kernels until the final sack was tied. Old records associate him with the winnowing of the harvest, and with the belief that every season asks us to recognise what must be kept and what must be released.

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