46 / 48
Glenbow Archives NA-2604-30
Feedingthefieldcrew
FROM THE TIME FARMERS FIRST
broke Prairie soil, harvest-time field
meals became a tradition.
Feeding the threshing crew was a big,
important job. Women, assisted by girls,
often cooked for these outfits. Presiding
over the cook shacks, they rose early to
bake dishes in wood stoves and served
hearty meals at tables or serving windows.
Preserved in the photo archive of Cal-
gary’s Glenbow Museum, this photo of
farmer Tom Whittle and his harvest crew
at lunch was taken near Foremost in
1917. The image also accompanied a 1986
story entitled “Folklife of The Threshing
Outfit” in
South Dakota History
, the jour-
nal of the South Dakota State Historical
Society. Written by Thomas D. Isern, he
noted that threshing was prevalent from
the late 1890s through the Second World
War and beyond. During that time, cus-
tom threshing crews travelled the West,
complemented by many farmers-
helping-farmers crews.
Feeding crews was a daylong job accord-
ing to Anna May Handley, who worked as
a hired girl in Saskatchewan in 1928 and
whose recollections Isern quotes. “Break-
fast consisted of bacon, eggs, hash brown
potatoes, and a gallon of coffee. For dinner
at 11:00 a.m. we cooked a 15 pound roast,
two types of vegetables and what seemed
to me to be a half bushel of potatoes. (I
had to peel them.) All the men liked pie
for dessert, so we baked three pies every
day. At 3 p.m. we took lunch out to the
field. This was another gallon of coffee,
sandwiches, and cookies. For supper we
had cold meats, potatoes, salads, and cake
for dessert.
“The highlight of our day was when
we took lunch out to the threshing crew.
We waited until the men had finished
eating so we could bring the plates home.
I enjoyed the ride home on those beautiful
autumn days, when there wasn’t a breath
of wind and a haze hung over the land-
scape. It felt good to be alive.”
When boarding threshing crews,
work for the farm wife multiplied. “She
did not relish social contact with these
individuals,” wrote Isern, hinting at their
roughness. Not surprisingly, farm wives
were supporters of new farming technol-
ogy such as gas-powered combines that
appeared in the late 1920s, ending the
threshing era.
AGAINST
THE GRAIN
Fall
2017
Grains
West
46