No Man's Child - Chapter 14

'They will come on you in the wild, in some dark place where there is no help. Do you wish them to find you? They are terrible!'

FOTR: Strider

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The men stride slowly in from the fields, bent double beneath their load. The soft sun of spring is gone and we come to days of the harvest. The men bear sheaves of spring wheat upon their back, a bundle near thrice their size, and so heavy is the load they sweat and grasp tightly to the ropes, forgetting all speech in their effort. But the boys who accompany them are more free of foot and tongue. They skip between their elders, pouncing upon dropped straws and heads of wheat and pile them in each other's arms and into baskets they carry lightly. The sheaves glow warmly in the autumn sun as they sink and rise with the fall of their bearer's feet. We have been gifted with dry weather and a strong breeze, and the folk of the Angle await them on the threshing-floor.
( Continued here )

Factoids about the Middle Ages

Newman, Paul. Daily Life in the Middle Ages. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, p 30.

On the use of rushes as insulation on the floor

Finally, beneath it all, the floor of the hall was covered in rushes, but these were not simply loose rushes strewn about the floor. Illuminations, such as those done for the Duke of Berry in the 15th century, show that the rushes were often woven into large mats that completely covered the floor of the hall, providing an absorbent and resilient, yet disposable, carpeting.