Some say that Gathering Nuts in May should really be Gathering Knots in May, knots being another word for garland, and may being the flower of the hawthorn.

The song Nutting Girl refers to the girl rising on a summer morning to go nutting; just about feasible for hazelnuts if it was very late summer. She meets a farmer a-ploughing of his land.

By late summer the harvest would presumably have been gathered in and ploughing wouldn't normally have started until after Christmas. So perhaps the farmer/ploughboy and the girl were unlikely to have met in the way described.

Maybe we just put it down to poetic licence.

LFF