A Meal From The Past

Thanksgiving is a time of feasting – harkening back to 1621 when Native Americans and Pilgrims shared in a festival that celebrated a successful corn harvest.

Though turkey was consumed on that first Thanksgiving, much of what we have to eat today was not on the menu. Cranberry sauce would not have been there. The sugar sacks the Pilgrims brought with them were depleted by then and cooks didn’t start boiling cranberries with sugar until about 50 years later.

Potatoes, sweet or white, were not consumed at the time, but turnips might have made their way to the table. Without flour or butter, the settlers couldn’t make a pie crust and they hadn’t constructed an oven for baking yet. Cooking was done over an open fire or in hot ashes.

One item frequently off our Thanksgiving menu is seafood, but mussels were abundant in New England and it’s likely the colonists included them in their feast.

Some Call It Stuffing, Some Call It Dressing

Seasoned bread cubes combined with celery, onions and carrot are part of the Thanksgiving menu.

Some like corn bread stuffing, while others prefer a plain bread stuffing. Some put the stuffing in the turkey, others prefer to bake it separately. Still others eschew the whole stuffing/dressing idea all together feeling that there are enough carbohydrates in the dinner rolls and mashed potatoes.

It’s called stuffing by most, but some call it dressing and others use both terms interchangeably. It can be argued that it’s called stuffing if it’s stuffed inside the turkey, and dressing if it’s baked in its own dish. But, these are only style points. It all goes with the turkey.

Time To Eat

Then, there’s a debate on how to eat it. Some ascribe to the notion that the food is best enjoyed by getting a bit of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce on your fork… all for just one mouthful. Others believe each bite should be consumed individually and thoroughly enjoyed.

Still others prefer to remain vegetarian and celebrate Thanksgiving with all the sides and skip the turkey!

However you enjoy your feast, it’s a time to give thanks for all we have.

Whether you are with a lot of family, just a few family members, or by yourself, let gratitude pour into your heart. Gratitude for this very bite of food.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Preparation

Grocery shelves groan under the weight of extra produce that will grace our tables. Pumpkins and butternut squash are piled high. Extra displays are set up with traditional foods for the Thanksgiving table such as sweet potatoes and yams, bags of cranberries, green beans, and stuffing mix for the turkey.

A Thanksgiving table with traditional foods such as turkey, green beans, and cranberry sauce.

We Remember Our Farmers

It's a holiday for feasting, a celebration of the abundance of the year's harvest. We come together to share our food and to give thanks.

With gratitude for our endless bounty, we also take a moment to remember and thank those who provide all this food for us.

Our farmers.

Paul Harvey, a radio broadcaster from a time when radio was king, delivered a broadcast in 1978 about farmers. It became known by the title, "So God Made A Farmer."

Harvey painted with his words the hard work and humble life of a farmer. A rising sun waits for no one and so, the farmer rises early each day to tend the animals and the fields, no matter what. It's a life that requires resiliency and strength. How many of us would have the fortitude to be a farmer?

We need someone to help provide us with food. So God Made A Farmer.

God Made A Farmer (text)

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two hours." So God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church.

Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life doing what dad does." So God made a farmer.

–Paul Harvey

Farmers are men and women, young and old. They all contribute to the bounty on our tables.

Farmers Face Challenges

There are struggles for today's farmers on many levels. Concerns swirl around us such as animal treatment, genetic manipulation of seeds, loss of crop land, and getting food to the hungry, just to name a few. As we become more and more urbanized, there is concern as to who will set up to becpme our next generation of farmers.

Some of our many farmers who bring us our daily food.

We Say Thank You

We also remember the long chain of people who bring the farmers' food to us. Many hands touch the food before we buy it, like people who package it, the truckers and the store workers.

This Thanksgiving holiday, we bow our heads before the beautiful food on our tables and we say thank you to everyone who helped bring it to us.

Photos of the farmers are all
by Paul Mobley from an article in The Morning News.

Hearts in the Wind