What is your favorite harvest memory?
GOING OUT WITH A BANG
My mother was a hard worker who helped on the neighbor’s farm when I was little. Fast-forward about 40 years. It was the last year my husband and I farmed and the last harvest. Back then, our equipment was on its last legs. We gave my mother the job of driving truck.
We had about half the field left to combine and we hear a BANG! She hopped out of the truck and over those windrows so fast! She thought she had wrecked the truck, but one of the inside dual tires blew. I don’t think I had ever seen my mother move that fast.
We finished combining, limping the truck along. We enjoyed a supper and had some good laughs. My mother has passed away, but we still talk about how we got out of farming with a BANG!
Rebecca Van Erem
Capital Electric Cooperative
PICKING FRESH TOMATOES
I like walking and crawling through the damp, fresh tomato plants, finding ripe, delicious tomatoes.
We usually plant regular and cherry tomatoes. In the past, we have also planted yellow pear tomatoes and Midnight Snack cherry tomatoes.
After harvesting our garden, we have lots of extra tomatoes and my dad makes yummy salsa, pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce. And that is one of my favorite and most yummy harvesting memories!
Aidan Heinle, age 10
Mor-Gran-Sou Electric Cooperative
ALWAYS BEING GRATEFUL
Harvest always exudes a plethora of memories. The smell of ripening grain. The combines rolling in the fields collecting the reward and toil of the season. The grain trucks lumbering in and out of the farmyard as they bring in the harvest. The homemade meals in the field and late-night suppers. But there’s always the threat of ominous weather that would destroy everything.
One harvest season I will never forget was one of those ominous weather events – HAIL! On a Saturday night, we were all standing by the porch door watching in horror the destruction of the year’s labor.
Sunday morning always meant church, and this Sunday morning was no different. What struck me on this particularly sad Sunday morning was watching Mom sit down at the kitchen table, like she did every Sunday morning, and write a check to the church. We had just lost an entire year’s income less than 24 hours earlier, and she still displayed her faith that God will provide.
That example of faith and stewardship has served me well and taught me to be thankful for what I have.
There have been many successful harvests as well as many hail storms since that fateful day years ago, and we are all still standing! Which proves more than ever the power of what I saw that Sunday morning after a devastating hail storm – God will indeed provide.
Kathy Broderson Muscha
Verendrye Electric Cooperative
EARLY DAYS OF HARVESTING
In my childhood days, I have fond memories of harvest times. During that era, it was referred to as threshing time. When grain fields were ripe, a grain binder cut grain into bundles. Later, neighbors gathered to have threshing days. In some cases, a neighbor owned a threshing machine, which is now a prairie dinosaur. This machine was moved around the community. Men would gather with their team of horses and hayracks to haul bundles from the fields to the threshing machine, which separated grain from the bundles.
When I was a child, we had the chore of taking forenoon lunch to the threshing crew. Mother prepared coffee, sandwiches and homemade buttermilk donuts for their break. If threshing was to continue until the second day, some men spent the evening sleeping in our hayloft.
As a young child, these days were exciting.
June Dokken
Verendrye Electric Cooperative
FEEDING THE CREW
Years ago, I always took hot meals to the field during harvest at noon and 6 p.m. I recall one day when I had taken out a card table and four folding chairs on a day that was not too hot. The noon meal was crisp fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, buttered carrots, homemade bread with butter or jelly, plus brownies and a half-gallon of cherry Kool-Aid in a gold Tupperware pitcher.
Sometimes, the men used the end gate of a pickup for a table in the shade of the combine and upside down 5-gallon buckets for seats or used webbed lawn chairs.
Taking meals to the field saved them the time of coming to the house, and time is money during harvest. A full meal was more filling and satisfying than sandwiches. Other meals included lasagna, pork chops smothered in mushroom gravy, Swiss steak, beef stew, meatloaf and more. Utensils included white Melamine plates, clear plastic glasses that had white daisies on them and real silverware for the meal. Condiments, napkins and toothpicks were included each time.
The meal took only minutes for the men to eat and relax before getting back into the combine and trucks. After they left, I headed home to clean the dirty dishes, the cookware on the counter to store leftovers. After a few minutes to relax, it was time to start all over again to plan or begin the next meal.
Marlene Kouba
Slope Electric Cooperative
JUST LIKE MOM
My favorite harvest memory is riding in the combine when I was little with my mom. I remember thinking how cool she was, as she was driving such a big machine and doing such an important job on the farm by bringing in the harvest. Oh, how I wanted to be just like her!
Fast-forward to today and I get to drive an even bigger machine to bring in the important harvest!
Jackie Sorenson
Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative
FAIR TRADE
This memory dates back to the late 1940s near Wolford. Orlan Tofte was one of the quick-witted boys in the neighboring Tofte family. Our Uncle Dwight wanted another cow to add to his herd. With an abundance of hay, he asked Orlan if he would trade a calf for a stack of hay. This seemed a good barter, so Uncle Dwight and Orlan made the trade.
About 3 months later, Uncle Dwight’s calf died and he confronted Orlan.
“That makes us even. That hay you gave me is gone, too,” Orlan replied.
Uncle Dwight expressed even though he was a little mad at first, he had to admit that was funny!
Creighton Gustafson
Northern Plains Electric Cooperative
WHEW!
My father-in-law and I were both combining wheat windrows when I suddenly smelled an awful skunk smell. I got on my CB and asked my father-in-law if he smelled skunk. “No!” My husband came to drive the truck and he asked what I did.
“You must have harvested a skunk that was hiding under the wheat windrow,” he said. I had to suffer smelling that in the cab.
Dorthy Robyt
Northern Plains Electric Cooperative
UPCOMING READER REPLY QUESTIONS
OCTOBER: It’s National Co-op Month! What’s the greatest benefit of being a cooperative member?
Deadline for submission: Sept. 12
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Deadline for submission: Oct. 10
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