A harvest welcome gate made from straw bales and seasonal flowers.
Every year around harvest time, villages across Poland are decorated with colourful Dożynki motifs celebrating the season. Alongside the traditional symbols, you can find some surprisingly creative constructions. Straw bales, flowers, vegetables and other harvest materials can become animals, people, farm machinery, flowers — and sometimes things that are much harder to predict.
A full village scene created from hay bales — storytelling in straw
In late August and September, a special rhythm takes over the Polish countryside. Fields that only weeks ago swayed with golden grain now hum with activity — combines and tractors clear the land, leaving neat rows of straw and preparing the soil for winter. For cyclists on rural roads, it’s a captivating spectacle of change — a landscape actively shifting day by day.