We have Turkey, lamb, and pies from food we have grown.
Pumpkin pie (made with blue hubbard squash)
Apple pie with Granny Smiths and others.
Pecan pie with nuts from our trees.
Edited to add homemade butter for all the yummy dishes from our cows. I churned just over 12 lbs last night.
I am counting blessings including good health, plenty of work for our crew, and a warm comfortable home. We have had a good and productive year in spite of the crazy in the world. Life is a very good gift from a very good God!
We have so much to thank God for! What a blessing of bounty we enjoy compared to our ancestors and much of the world today!
Another neat thing that goes along with thanksgiving and the pie, that I just thought to add, is the story of how the trees these berries came from, came to Kansas. The Russian Mennonites were being persecuted by the Russian government and part of it was their belief in not joining the military. In the 1870s some of them visited Kansas and were assured that they could buy cheap land and have religious freedom and exemption from military service. So many of them moved here to Kansas and brought their Russian Mulberries and Russian wheat, which impressed the locals since few tree plantings and no european wheat or corn had been successful on the dry high plains. So they found freedom and at the same time introduced helpful things that help make Kansas what it is today.
I have a set of cook books on different countries’ cuisines. The book on American cooking starts off with a chapter titled America the Plentiful and discusses how different it was for settlers from the crowded old world to come here to a land of plenty. America the beautiful is a song close to my heart, especially the plea for God to mend her every flaw.
I believe we in this great country are blessed because many of our early christian parents were children of Israel. We get the blessings and the curses of Deut. 28 forever.
It is a great and vast land, with a climate for every preference. The last stanza of our national anthem points forward. I’m thankful for the hope that our flag will again fly over the land if the free and the home of the brave.
My understanding is that the wheat that the Russian Mennonites brought was the only wheat resistant to the rust that wiped out most of the US crop in the late 19th century, and that same wheat is in fact still the basic lineage that is our hard red today. Unfortunately, there were knapweed seeds in with the wheat, and the knapweed did just as well as the wheat, and had no natural predators once it was introduced! So we have plenty of that too.
Is the story true? I don’t know, but it seems likely enough.
Yes it is the source of the hard red russian winter wheat grown today and was brought in around 1874 by the Russian mennonites. A very amazing hardy grain crop that is still the dominant crop in this region.
I am not familiar with the late 19th century rust story. Interesting!
I did some searching and this Kansas Ag historical doc from 1922 says the Russian Knapweed was a new weed at that time believed to have been brought in mixed in Turkestan Alfalfa seed. Very interesting for sure!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. 2 pumpkin pies with our eggs and long island cheese pumpkins. Apple pie with our Enterprise apples, along with local picked jonagold. I traded half the apple pie with a neighbor for half a pecan pie. Three delicious pies, grateful.
The wheat brought over by the Mennonites was called Turkey Red. It was ideally suited for the plains of Kansas and Colorado. It is a hard red winter wheat and grows 4-5 feet tall. This was the predominant wheat grown in this area until mechanical combines was introduced in the 1920s. These had difficulty because the wheat was so tall. It was crossed with a shorter Japanese variety to facilitate mechanical harvesting, and the crosses are the wheats that are grown today. There are a few farms that are still growing Turkey Red here in Colorado and it used as a premium wheat for baking. I planted some this fall and hope for a harvest next June. We are trying it both as a wheat, and to provide a green manure crop. I found some studies from 1920 and the roots can apparently go down 5-8 feet which is why it does so well in arid regions like Colorado.
