July 17 at St. Augustine’s Church will be the memorable Fidelity Picnic. A delicious fried chicken meal with all the trimmings, prepared by expert church cooks; a cakewalk, bingo, bounce house, and other games as well as live music will be featured at the Fidelity Picnic.
The Fidelity meal brings to mind what some recall as the “threshers’ meal”. A thresher’s meal was served at each farmstead when the threshing crews gathered to harvest the ripe grains. Early threshing precede today’s combines to harvest the ripe grains. Threshing involved manpower, horsepower and will power to finish this labor-intensive, exhausting task in the hot summer sun. Horses and steam engines were used to automate the threshing machine. Farmers in the neighborhood took turns hosting and helping each other with the harvest until the whole circuit of bringing in the grains was finished. Therein was the need for the threshers’ meal.
Although these photos were taken in Oregon, this is the general idea of threshing as it took place here in Kansas.
Raising chickens, gathering eggs, milking the cow(s), separating milk, churning butter, making cheese, planting and tending the garden, picking ripe fruits and vegetables, butchering and canning were part of the summer’s work for the women. On the day the threshing machine came to each farm, the farm women added in the enjoyable task of serving the noon meal. They would serve upwards of 15 hungry men for dinner (aka lunch today).
When the threshing machine pulled into the lane of her home, the farm woman was already deep in food preparation. A monumental job with no modern refrigeration and no local supermarket to purchase handy supplies, each farm woman worked for days to plan and assemble a delicious and bountiful meal for the hungry threshing crew. Like the men, the neighborhood women supported each other in preparing and serving the threshing meal. “Many hands make light work” was the motto shared by the womenfolk as they donned their aprons and set to work at each farmstead.
On the assigned day when the threshing machine and crew chugged into a farmstead, the neighborhood ladies would arrive early at the destination farm. The woman of the house would have been up hours before dawn, getting as much as possible ready before her friends arrived to help. She and her children would have dressed the needed chickens, picked garden produce, and probably baked pies and rolls. Chickens had to be kept cold in the spring house before frying. Cream pies had to be prepared at the very last minute. Yeast rolls were mixed up and baked; pie crusts rolled out, filled with various fruit filings, baked and allowed to cool before cutting. “Slicer tomatoes”, cucumbers and onions, and a big cabbage head were brought from the garden. Potatoes, best dug a few days early to make the fluffiest mashed potatoes, were washed and peeled, waiting in a bucket of well water to be boiled and mashed. Green beans were picked and trimmed, later to be boiled with a bit of bacon and onions. The applesauce would have been prepared from yellow transparent apples, a week or two in advance.
The dinner menu often included fried chicken, mashed potatoes and white gravy, roast beef with brown gravy, green beans, applesauce, homemade cottage cheese, cabbage slaw, sliced tomatoes, thinly sliced cucumbers and onions with vinegar, sweet pickles and dill pickles and pickled beets, yeast rolls, butter, jellies, pies, cakes and water.
When the food was ready, and the sun was high in the sky, the children rang the big dinner bell, calling the horses and crew in for their dinner.
The horses were taken to the full water tank to drink. Feed bags attached around their necks; the horses would be picketed in the shade.
Only after the horses were comfortable would the threshing crew come to the front yard where long plank tables and plank seats were set up.
Outside near the pump, a washstand with a mirror, a couple of bars of lye soap, a pitcher and bowl, hand towels and a comb were ready for the men to freshen up before they came to the tables for dinner.
A couple of the smaller children would be in charge of keeping away the flies. This was accomplished by waving a clean dishtowel on a stick over the bowls and platters and plates of delicious foods, waiting on nearby smaller tables.
Once seated, the passing of the chicken, beef, potatoes, gravies, vegetables, salads and rolls commenced. It took a few minutes to take the edge off their appetites. After making headway into their hunger, the men would swap stories and pass the bowls and platters to fill their plates again and again. Their voices and laughter and extravagant compliments made the morning’s hard work in the kitchen seem like fun. The women walked up and down the tables, filling up empty glasses with water from sweating metal pitchers. Fresh baskets of rolls and extra platters of food appeared on the table. When the men had enjoyed their fill of the main course, it was time for dessert. The slices of fruit and cream pies, along with the angle food and burnt sugar cakes disappeared in record time.
Groaning with contentment, the men would leave the table. Under the shade trees, the men lay down in the cool grass to rest a few minutes before untying the horses and returning to the wheat field. Back in the golden field, the harvest continued under the hot afternoon sun.
The women cleared up and washed the mountains of dishes. In record time, the kitchen and front yard would be returned to normal busy life. The neighborhood ladies would go home, each knowing these same women would be at their own homes bright and early to accomplish another threshers’ meal.
If you would like to experience a 2022 “cousin” of a Threshers’ Meal, don’t miss the Fidelity Picnic on Sunday, July 17 at St. Augustine’s church. Serving starts at 4:30.
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