Harvest Tales - Mitchell County 05
Harvest stories submitted by Kansans for the online exhibit, Wheat People.
Submit your own at kshs.kansasmuseum@ks.gov.
Carldon Broadbent
Harvest Meals
Mother always took great interest in the wheat harvest; she knew on which side her bread was buttered! . . . One of the first things was to get the water jugs ready for the men's use in the fields. First she bought three coke syrup glass one-gallon jugs at the local bottling plant. It was easy to find several old gunny sacks. She had a knack of sewing, stretching and winding the sack around the jug in enough layers to keep the water cool when the burlap had been soaking in water before sending them to the field. Her stitches were very tight, with no burlap sagging. Fixing jugs was a yearly job because the jugs would get broken each season, falling off the tractors, or getting run over by the equipment.
Next enough food supplies were brought home from town to feed an army. She didn't want her men to be hungry, causing fatigue and becoming accident prone. A huge meal at noon most generally was brought to the harvest field. Enough sandwich material was on hand for the four o'clock lunch with potato salad and plenty of cold ice tea. And then a snack at ten o'clock at night was ready after coming from the fields.
Her chicken yard furnished all the fried chicken that she needed, if the chicken hawks hadn't carried off her fryers by harvest time.
Carldon Broadbent also submitted Breakdowns and Repairs.