Thoughts During Harvest Season

     It's curious that when I was growing up in a farming community on the Great Plains in northeastern Colorado, where grains (wheat, oats, barley, milo, sorghum, feed corn), sugar beets and cattle were the main foods produced, I was little aware of it as “real” food. It was all shipped elsewhere to be processed, never to be seen again – or at least not recognized as something local when it came back to us. Maybe I was too young to be interested, no one else seemed to be either.

     The sugar beets went to a factory in the neighboring town, about 7 miles away. Some of them likely ended up in our grocery stores, kitchens, school cafeteria and restaurants but there was no way of telling. It all went under the name Great Western sugar, just like beets from elsewhere. Still, I doubt many locals reached for bags labeled cane sugar; they likely would have been loyal to beet sugar.

     It was the same with grains. At harvest, farmers brought their crops to any of three grain elevators in town, one of which my grandfather owned. When prices seemed good (always a gamble), they were sold and shipped by rail to Denver. There they were mixed with grains from all over the region and sent to mills where they were processed into flour and returned to us in bags labeled Gold Medal or Pillsbury. Bleached white flour was most commonly used; the germ and bran were removed and sold separately. It never occurred to me (or probably most anyone else, except perhaps the farm families themselves) that some of the Wonder bread hugging our lunch meat and mayo or peanut butter and jelly together came from a nearby farm.

     A farmer friend here in Oregon said when his mother was a school teacher she realized that even some of her students who lived on farms, whose families grew wheat, didn't see the connection between wheat and bread. It's likely the same everywhere, or was more so back then. I suspect I knew it intellectually as a kid, we would have learned it in school. But, it sure wasn't what I was thinking when I put slices of bread in the toaster or made a grilled cheese sandwiche. Or, when we went to Grandad's elevator and he'd let us get a handful of wheat to chew on 'til it turned to a chewy gum-like substance - probably gluten.

     Today we live in Oregon's Willamette Valley where the dominant crops are timber and grass seed, but can name the farm behind just about everything on our plates every day, including the meat, beans and grains. In fact, I buy wheat and triticale directly from farmers and grind it myself when making bread or pastries. It's

Not your grandmother's white bread

as far as you can get from Wonder bread. White wheat (has less gluten so is used for pastry and flat breads) grows best in this climate, but some red wheat is grown too. White wheat, freshly-ground, makes excellent pie crusts and crackers – ones you really taste because of the texture and flavor. Red wheat is what was/is grown where I grew up, which is highest in gluten and used for bread.

     Much of the produce we eat is from our own gardens and much of the seed for that comes from local farms, or from seed Don saved himself. Farmers where I grew up saved their own seed, selecting the best each year to plant the following year. Today, not only is it discouraged, it's illegal with proprietary seeds, especially genetically modified ones (gmo). Fortunately, not everyone buys into that scheme and I buy from farmers who don't.

      Harvest season today is very different. For one thing, I'm far more involved in growing and preserving a good chunk of our food. As a kid, I got to go out into harvest fields with friends to deliver lunch to harvest crews and loved the whole dusty, hot, sweaty scene, but then I didn't have to be out in it all day like those men and women, in open combines and trucks – nothing to silence the noise or keep the dust out of every pore of their bodies and clothes. One time when I was in grade school, my friend, Jennifer, who was a year older than me, had to move a truck for her dad and I got to “help.” We could barely see through (let alone over) the steering wheel and I remember monitoring her progress by watching through a hole in the floor.

    Besides the grain elevator, Grandad owned a half section of land. Rain and hail would often hit during summer and could damage or destroy a crop within minutes. He paced the living room on stormy nights, along with every other helpless farmer. I realize now those storms affected everyone since it was an agricultural community and all the businesses and tax rolls depended upon a successful harvest.

Saturday Night

      Summer Saturday nights were lively in our town back then, especially during harvest. This was before farmers had their own harvest equipment so they relied on crews that went through all the farming communities doing custom harvests. It must have been a scheduling nightmare, given the vagaries of weather. The crews were composed of high school or college-age boys and Mexicans who came north specifically to work harvests. It was an intense, exhausting season for all involved.

     The downtown merchants stayed open late on Saturday nights then – grocery stores, drug stores, clothing stores, the five-&-dime, barbers, restaurants, cafes, bars, liquor stores, the library, the Hippodrome theater, even car dealerships. Farmers and their families came to town that night. So did just about everyone in town.
     During harvests there were sometimes live bands in a Quonset hut near one of the grain elevators on Friday or Saturday night, where all the teenagers gathered. I worked in a drug store all through high school and remember Saturday nights being extremely busy. It was exhausting, but fun too.

      Apparently it had been so when my parents were in high school, as well. My Dad also worked in a drugstore during high school and his boss, Mr. Cleveland wouldn't close the store "until the last farmer left town,” Mom said. By then, it was too late for her to go out. She said my grandmother, like many others in town, would park her car in a strategic spot downtown that afternoon and walk home (only about 4 blocks), then come back in the evening and have a prime spot to people watch and visit with passers-by. That was what people did on their front porches during nice weather – but the “porches” moved downtown on Saturday night. No one had a television set then and computers and social media were the stuff of science fiction.

      Today, small farming and logging communities are but a shadow of their former selves and not only are Saturday nights quiet, but most every night is. Farmers have their own harvest equipment, or have closer access to it when they need it. Small hometown stores have been replaced by the Walmarts and similar chain stores with lower prices, though people have to drive to other communities to shop them. The internet has also taken a toll since you can shop from home. Porches on houses today are more for looks. I never see people sitting on them, visiting with passers-by, though some of the fancy houses even have nice wicker furniture on their porches. Community organizations are fading, as well. We're "too busy" and connect more via a machines. We don't have time, we say. What are we spending our time on? What is happening to “community”? It's a question surely every generation has asked as their worlds changed.