You reap what you sow!

I love fall. The changing colors of the trees, the scent of the air as it gets cooler, the feel of a warm hand knit sweater that keeps away the chill and the food. Apples, squash, beans aah the list goose on. Growing up it meant our kitchen was full of yummy smells. My mom's home made spaghetti sauce and I knew the difference between hers and store bought. Jam from raspberries and blueberries. Then there was the butternut squash. In 1997 in a fit of well crazy brilliance my mother took over the large plot of garden my Grandma and Grandpa K used to tend. Grandpa decided two large plots were too much. Let my mom use the top and he used the bottom one. He showed my mother how to plant butternut squash, his main, well, crop cause face it 150 butternut squashes is a crop. Through the years that plot has grown and grown.

Onions and Garlic from my garden

Now although there are plants you harvest in the summer the largest harvest happens between September and the first frost. Historically in the U.S. schooling worked around planting and harvest seasons. It was the busiest time of year for farmers as they rush(ed) to bring in the harvest. In fact the first industry in the world was agriculture.  Happening all over the world 12,000 years ago Nomads around the world from China to Egypt to Brazil. Pinning down an exact place and time is almost impossible but among the first cultivated, wheat and Rye. (Bread)

Nomadic tribes that had followed food stayed in one place. In Mesa Verde in Colorado they lived in Cave dwellings on the sides of cliffs and planted corn on the top of the cliff around 2,000 years ago. The earliest tools were made from bones and rocks. With the creation of metal tools the task got easier. The back breaking task got even easier in the 1850s with the invention of the steam tractor.

Food in a Dutch painting of s market, 1500s

The best part about harvest season? Feasting! Today we celebrate with Thanksgiving.  A 1860 tradition to breakup the fear of Civil War, made a holiday by President Lincoln in 1863. It was inspired by the early settlers in New Plymouth, in what is today Massachusetts. A Harvest feast in October 1621 brought both Englishmen and Natives together and Lincoln used it to his advantage.  A Thanksgiving on the other hand was a day of fasting. (More of that in a later blog.)

So here is to the harvest, to a strong one, a full one and a yummy one, now someone pass the Potatoes.