This painting is one in a series of six works that depict different times of the year. As in many of Pieter Bruegel´s paintings, the focus is on peasants and their work. Some of the peasants are shown eating while others are harvesting wheat, a depiction of both the production and consumption of food. Pears can be seen on the white cloth in front of the upright sitting woman who eats bread and cheese while a figure in the tree to the far right rear can be seen picking pears.

Bruegel’s series is a watershed in the history of western art. The religious pretext for landscape painting has been suppressed in favor of a new humanism, and the unidealized description of the local scene is based on natural observations. [from the wall text at Metropolitan Museum of Art]