Meals to the Fields…

While the crew is out harvesting wheat all day, my mother-in-law and I like to lay by the pool and eat our bon-bons while working on our tans.

In our dreams!

In reality, while the crew is out in the fields, my mother-in-law and I are doing our part to help make life more pleasant during harvest.

Making life more pleasant during harvest for our crew means keeping them well-fed.

During harvest–although there are some days when the crew will come to one of our houses to eat inside– the majority of meals have to be prepared, packed, and hauled out to a field somewhere.

Adam told me the other morning that he likes going to a house to eat a meal during harvest–but when that’s done they lose enough time that could’ve been used to cut 23 acres of wheat. And with the constant sense of urgency in getting all of the wheat cut before the summer storms, there’s not a lot of time to stop and enjoy a meal in the comfort of our air conditioned homes.

Enter the proverbial chuck wagon here…

My mother-in-law, Cindy, has perfected feeding the masses.

She’s a rock star!!

Cindy provides delivery service of quality meals to fields twice a day–shortly after 12:00 and at 6:30pm.

Guaranteed.

It’s like a picnic–for the Duggar family, but with less kids!

I’m her helper.

And while it would be easy to make a massive amount of ham & cheese sandwiches every day, ham & cheese sandwiches every day would get pretty old, pretty quickly.

So Cindy mixes things up.

Yes, sometimes a nice cold sandwich is really all the guys want to eat, but they also like (and deserve) some hot meals.

Whether it’s cold sandwiches or hot meals, a heck of a lot of food is made during harvest.

We officially started harvest on May 28th this year. We were out of the fields due to rain for three days.

Between May 28th and today, there have been days where we have needed to feed up to 12 people per meal.

With so much food being made for so many hungry mouths, our kitchens have been transformed into lean, mean, food prep machines.

I refuse to show you pictures!

And with so many hungry mouths to feed at every meal, a heck of a lot of trips are made to town to pick up groceries during wheat harvest.

And with a heck of a lot of trips made to town, our brains start thinking in bulk…

A loaf of bread has 24 slices (not including the ends). That’s enough to make 12 sandwiches.

A Crystal Light package contains enough mix to make 2 1/2 gallons.

About two pounds of ground beef is needed to make enough Sloppy Joes for each person to have two sandwiches.

A family pack of single serving chips contains 32 bags.

A cookie recipe makes about four dozen cookies.

The guys like bananas, nectarines, and peaches.

They also like bottled water, and an occasional afternoon (around 3:30) sweet treat like a candy bar.

You can do the math to figure out what our grocery bills look like during harvest time!

I don’t want to think about it.

Some days I think we are harvesting the wheat in our fields just to make enough bread to keep feeding our crew.

In reality, according to http://www.kswheat.com, Kansas farmers alone produce roughly 380 million bushels of wheat each year.

That’s enough to feed every man, woman and child in the world for an entire week!

Now THAT would be a lot of meals to the fields!

So we’ll continue baking, mixing, shopping–not to mention cleaning and dishwashing– packaging, and delivering for our sweaty harvest crew so we can help provide meals for others, too.