August Labours - Ceres: "Earth's increase, foison* plenty, Barns and garners never empty" Shakespeare, The Tempest

Depending on geography and a region's expected August weather,  harvesting would continue with reaping and the subsequent threshing and winnowing of the grain, i.e. separating the wheat (or rye or barley) from the chaff.

This lovely miniature shows the sheaves of wheat, and the thresher with his flail lifted over his head, beating the ears of corn from its straw on the floor.   His companion the winnower with his basket, will toss the grain to let the lightweight husks fly off, leaving the heavier edible grains ready to bag up for grinding.  Shoes and hose (rolled down and tied?) protect their legs from all the flying dust and sharp debris.  Overseeing all this activity is the image of Ceres, goddess of the Harvest, who variously holds  a sheaf of wheat or a palm frond, and also represents Virgo, the constellation for the month.

Vignettes of monthly Labours from the Fontana Maggiore, Perugia.  

Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, c. 1277-78

In this Italian version, the Pisanos, father and son, have carved a vigorous thresher with his flail, with its long weight jointed to swing down on the ears of wheat, alongside the winnower using a broad long-handled spade rather than a basket, to toss the grains and separate the chaff.  In sunny Italy this threshing takes place under the earlier zodiac sign of Leo, the lion, seen tucked into a top corner.  

The new realism Nicola Pisano brought to these Labours of the Month sculpted figures, decorating twelve of the twenty-five sides of Perugia's  great public fountain,  show clearly that these all-important labours require a lot of physical effort. Working in stone and marble, with hammer and chisel, the carvers would have understood the harvesters' effort;  these vivid sculptures around Perugia's fountain were Nicola Pisano's last major work.

*foison: plenty, abundance (Dr. Johnson cites Shakespeare as his source for 'foison' in his Dictionary)

"Divinest creature, Astrea's daughter" *

Very soon the sign of Virgo takes over from Leo in the zodiac, and hints of incipient autumn make our summer pleasures keener, just as they did six hundred years ago -- for the harvesters as well as the elegant ladies and the lords in their straw hats, before the Chateau d'Estampes. 

August, from Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, c.1412-16

The constellation of Virgo, according to  Greek myth, was created when Astrea, virgin goddess of the Golden Age, left the sinful earth for the heavens.   She is also linked with the goddess Ceres and harvest-time.

Here Virgo is portrayed by astronomer Johannes Hevelius in his Uranographia of 1690, her left hand holding its sheaf of corn.

In literature Astrea is seen to preside over a new Golden Age of Justice, symbolically representing Queen Elizabeth I in Spenser's  Faerie Queene, and similarly in Dryden's poem Astrea Redux, celebrating the return of Charles II in 1660.    In seventeenth century France, she was the heroine of Honore' d'Urfe's pastoral romance, L'Astree,  a best seller for many decades; her lover, the shepherd Celadon, dressed in grey-green, and gave his name to this colour in Europe.   The word celadon is now synonymous with Song dynasty porcelains.

Bowl with lid, Longquan ware; Song Dynasty **

* Shakespeare,  Henry VI Pt.1, Act I. vi, of Joan of Arc.

**  Chinese Ceramics , Dr. F. Lili, Chinese Intercontinental Press