BACK to the land, it is the season for the Plough Service - so much a sort of agricultural new year that an earlier report appeared beneath the headline "Furrowed lang syne", of which its writer remains inordinately proud.

We've followed a couple of plough services now - at Forcett, near Scotch Corner, where the custom had been disinterred the year before and at Masham, North Yorkshire, where Plough Sunday was so much part of village tradition that it had been broadcast live on the North Home Service.

Last Sunday's service was at the originally 12th century St Andrew's church, Kirkby Malzeard, a prosperous looking village between Masham and Ripon where - some rarity - the collection doesn't rattle, it rustles.

We'd also attended St Andrew's patronal festival six years ago, chatted away to the churchwardens, watched while the young curate blew bubbles from the pulpit.

"There is something fundamentally freeing about blowing bubbles," the Rev Matthew Evans had said, theologically.

However ephemeral, the bubbles made a lasting impression: the same may not be said for the At Your Service column. Though they were warmly welcoming, the church chocker, none could even recall our appearance.

"Apart from the carol service, when it's stacked out of the doors, the plough service is the best attended of the year," said Chris Broadley, warden now and in 1999.

The tradition is said to date back to the days when farm work stopped for Christmas, either because of the need of a holiday or because the ground was unworkable. Teams of plough boys would go round singing for their suppers instead, the gardens of those who declined appreciation sometimes mysteriously ploughed up thereafter. Twelfth Night passed, Plough Sunday following, it was time to return to the soil.

Kirkby Malzeard restored the tradition in 1947 - "a lot of cattle have passed through the books since then," said Chris Broadley - and maintains it with much style.

The horse drawn plough that churchwarden Mike Atkinson's father had given 59 years ago - "He'd just bought a tractor," said Mike - is still carried to the front of the church, accompanied by farmers of the parish and followed for the last 20 years or so by the Highside Longsword Dancers, another part of the tradition.

Local legend has it that Henry Jenkins, after whom one of the two village pubs is named, was a member of a 17th century longsword band in the area. His grave at Bolton-on-Swale, near Richmond, records that he lived to 169 and swore by the efficacy of nettle stew and swimming in the Swale. Longsword dancing never got a mention.

In the 1980s, however, the then parson had been reluctant to let them take part. "He finally said we could dance outside," recalls Ted Dodsworth, the leader. "Fortunately it poured down; they had to let us in."

The dance culminates with the swords being held against a worthy's throat. "We did the Bishop of Ripon once," said Ted and they also "did" Richard Whiteley, though in no way responsible for his lamented passing last year.

The church fills rapidly, plenty of youngsters. The organist plays that little number which always translates into "Dozy dotes and mazy dotes and little lambsy divies" but which doubtless has a Sunday name. Someone may even know it.

The service begins with All Creatures of Our God and King, written by St Francis of Assisi, and with the familiar words from the beginning of the 24th Psalm: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof...."

It was sadly impossible not to recall that in the Scottish Highlands, where the daily round depends so much on boat and bus, they still employ a variation:

The earth belongs unto the Lord

And all that it contains,

Except for the Kyles and the Western Isles

And they belong to MacBrayne's

The plough is blessed as a symbol of the coming year, Canon Peter Garner (who sounds a bit like the Prince of Wales) prays not just for the farmers and their crops but for conservationists, agricultural engineers, scientists and "those who probe the secrets of the earth".

Now retired, but a former priest-in-charge of the Fountains group of parishes, Kirkby Malzeard the biggest of eight, Canon Garner acknowledges in his sermon that Plough Sunday is very much part of the past. "The past," he adds, "isn't what it was."

We sing We Plough the Fields and Scatter and God Whose Farm is All Creation, listen (perhaps inevitably) to the parable of the sower, await the dancers and the preamble to their story, an allegory (it's said) of Samson and Delilah.

Longsword is a peculiarly Yorkshire tradition, the dance particularly for Kirkby Malzeard, the tune T'owd Lass o' Dallowgill. It seems remarkably intricate in so small a space, an exercise to make Strictly Come Dancing resemble a youth club barn dance (of fond memory) by comparison and to threaten fearful mischief to those in the front pews.

Ted insists there's little to it, reckons rapper dancing more difficult and more dangerous. In any case, he adds, they're from Yorkshire. "Yorkshiremen are always economical with their movement."

The service ends with Lord of the Dance, with coffee at the back of the church, with lunch at the Henry Jenkins for the dancers and with an afternoon's contemplation of how "Furrowed lang syne" may be bettered as a headline.

Probably it can't, not ever. "Swords into plough shares" may biblically have to suffice.