The Grand Grain Refrain—1935 Harvest Reminiscences in Verse

by Don Schmick and Don Reich (2008); edited by Richard Scheuerman

About the time we were winding down last year’s Palouse Colony Farm harvest longtime friend Dale Schneidmiller of St. John, Washington, sent me a tattered photograph showing a steam- and horse-powered threshing outfit for which our grandfathers worked over a century ago. One thing led to another and by some chance I found myself driving by the very place where this picture had been taken 108 years earlier just as a pair of high capacity John Deere combines driven by longtime friends, brothers Matt and Nate Klaveno, unloaded grain there into a bank-out wagon. I had my phone camera so snapped the serendipitous shot below.

Don Schmick and Don Reich viewing old harvest photographs

The experience reminded me of a series of visits I had in 2008 with community elders Don Schmick and Don Reich of Colfax about their memories of Depression-era seasons on the farm. While scribbling down their vivid recollections I was struck by the poetry of their expressions. For the summer-harvest segment, they told of “oiled leather collars and shiny hames” used to harness the immense teams of horses and mules, mimicked thresher sounds, and even remembered the names of their beloved draft animals. When I got back home I decided rather than following my usual custom of typing up a verbatim transcript of the interviews, that I would arrange their words in verse using many of the expressions they had wistfully shared. The following stanzas are their “Grand Grain Refrain.”

Harvests Yesterday and Today—Different Times, Identical Location
Lautenschlager & Poffenroth (1911) and Klaveano Brothers Threshing Outfits (2019)
Four miles north of Endicott, Washington

Mend the fences and steepled posts,
Hogwire and three barbed lines
Hold the Herefords from trespassing.
Reassuring early morning barn stall conversation,
Mammoth creatures, tons of muscled horses.
Fanny, Sam, Mable, Hank!
Friendly short names, ready for the season,
Curry-combed backsides, gettin’ into shape,
Easy walks around the yard, settle them colts down,
Oiled leather collars and shiny hames,
Jingling bridles, bits, and rings on shaking heads,
Harness pulled back in small caresses,
Hooked under tails, trace chains and singletrees—
Don’t get kicked. “Send ya ‘cross the barn!”
Hook those reins so they feel your pull,
“Easy now, girl,” and out to wet April fields,
Great hooves, thrown mud, manure, clods.

Find the backland ‘round the draw,
And follow that plow all day long,
Three bottoms behind nine head,
Plowshares shining like silver service,
Five in the back, four out front,
Through sleet and sunburn,
Slicing, turning black earthen braids.
Red-tailed hawks methodically coursing
For mice suddenly set to sprint.
Ten acres a day of snail’s pace standing,
Then harrow those clods before it dries,
Rod-weed the ground and watch that chain;
Singin’ in the dust.

Every day now, Dad on the hillside,
A crisp ear rubbed in hands, ancient ways,
Wisp of breath, chaff explodes, kernels chewed.
All expectant judgment, till one day
Verdict soberly rendered: Ready. And all hands to harvest!
Headers in wheat, experienced pilots,
Sickles singing, ferris-reels combing.
“Don’t fail me now, Fanny and Sam!”
Four on header-boxes, keep straight
As fifty-bushel treasure falls.
Wagons to the derrick, hoedowns pitch.

Mile-long twisted shush belt,
Engine cranked, pops, …pops and runs.
And she moans, galvanized metal moans.
Heaves and bucks and thumps,
Great clamored crashing, ancient dust.
Long-necked oil cans at ready,
Mechanic tends the grinding symphony,
First and second sprockets and chains,
Guns and cans to tighten, grease, and oil.
Then the pulse, the pulse of tumbling gold.
Squeeze it, chew it; great harvest smiles.
Thirty-five cent wheat, figures in dust,
Delicious cool water in gunny-sacked jugs.
Tenders and jigs and flailing sewers,
Sacks stacked and hauled to flat-houses,
Headers and boxers mine, threshers refine,
And then the dew.

Sounds die, teams unhooked,
Thick black coffee, monstrous dinner.
Bindlestiffs in the barn, hayloft hornets,
Bedrolls over straw, exhaustion sleep.
Week after week: The Grand Grain Refrain.

Amber Waves of Eden Grain

Persian Grain Market (c. 1900)

“There’s only one thing better than a good story, and that’s a good true story!” sagely observed legendary Pikes Place Market restaurateur, brewer, and entrepreneur Charlie Finkel of Seattle. We were discussing the various benefits of heritage grains like flavor and nutrition, and Charlie pointed out that cultural values also greatly contribute to culinary significance. Like fine wines, the evocative names of many heritage varieties suggest fascinating worldwide associations and distinct flavors as with Yellow Breton wheat, Scots Bere barley, and the Himalayan Brown oat. But the context of our visit about “true stories” was how a USDA “plant explorer” came across an exceedingly rare hard white grain while on an expedition to Persia over a century ago. This historic region covered present Iran and portions of Iraq and included the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, long considered the Mesopotamian cradle of civilization.

The American had visited a Persian grain market famed for quality and variety, and asked his host for a sample of their finest wheat. He was directed to a vendor and asked him what made his wheat so special. The visitor learned that its name apparently said it all—the grain came from the land of Eden. The skeptical scientist may well have dismissed such a fanciful story, but nevertheless retrieved a sample for the USDA seed collection at Beltsville, Maryland, where it was stored with countless others. That might have been the end of the story had not some agricultural experiment stations in the western US a few years afterward sought to identify the baking characteristics of several recent grain introductions. As is commonly known, the finest yeast breads are made from hard red wheats, while pastry and flatbread flours are made from soft white varieties. Only in exceedingly rare instances does Mother Nature create a hard white wheat which makes possible a lightly colored whole grain loaf.  The variety found at the Persian bazaar, they discovered, was a hard white wheat which they further identified as an “excellent miller.”

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World Grains Map (1907)

The wonderful flavor and appearance of hard white baked goods have long made it a highly desirable flour, and it typically fetches premium prices although virtually all hard white bread flours today are modern hybrids bred primarily for greater yields. We undertook a worldwide detective hunt for the Eden grain found in Persia over a century ago which was no longer available from the USDA. We eventually located a sample from a European germplasm center and set about with a few precious seeds several years ago to carefully increase it to the point that we able to plant about one acre this past spring, which should yield about a ton of when ready to harvest (and we’re harvesting it now as this is written!).

Sowing Palouse Heritage Amber Eden Wheat (Early May 2020)

Grandpa’s Weed-pullers (July 2020)

Amber Eden is a beautiful grain with large beardless heads, and to ensure a clean crop we’ve twice enlisted the valued help of young grandsons Zachary, Micah, and Derek to keep any other plants from growing in the field. This old-fashioned process is called “rōgging,” a term that comes from German roggen, or rye. Back in the day rye was sometimes mixed with wheat and barley so the stalks were pulled out by hand to keep crops pure. The boys are anxiously awaiting the fruit of their labors in the form of a freshly baked loaf after harvest, and Zachary intends to bake it himself, something Grandpa never considered doing at that age.

Of Grains and Gluten

Harvest since time immemorial was understood in ritual terms as the principal duty in humanity’s relationship with Mother Earth for the perpetuation of life. This was essentially the purpose of existence….     —J. Katarzyna Dadak-Kozicka

Perpetuation of life. The association of grain harvest with life has been honored since time immemorial in culinary traditions, stories, rituals, and art forms that I have regularly explored in this forum. The following entry shares long considered perspectives on grains and human health, especially in the context of the recent controversy surrounding gluten. As I compose these lines the word is emblazoned on an enormous crimson heart prominently featured on the back cover of Wheat Life magazine’s current issue, and above the byline “We love wheat.” You might think that’s appropriate advertising for an agricultural trade journal, but in our day gluten has become a touchstone for both nutritional defenders and accusers. Winnowing through the considerable range of literature on the subject helps separate science from speculation, and I am grateful to several persons for sharing their perspectives and pointing us toward informed sources on the topic. In particular I thank cereal chemist Andrew Ross at Oregon State University, Stephen Jones at the Washington State University’s Bread Lab in Burlington, and Weston Price chapter leader Maria Atwood of Colorado Springs.    

Palouse Heritage grain breads at The Grain Shed in Spokane, WA

Palouse Heritage grain breads at Ethos Bakery in Richland, WA

In terms of definitions, gluten is a class of proteins found in wheat, barley, rye, and some oat flours that when combined with water and kneading create doughs for breads and other foods. Glutenins are the gluten proteins that provide dough elasticity while gliadins enable it to cohere when spread out. These functions combine to make doughs rise by trapping gas released through leavening. The process has been widely used since the domestication of grains some 10,000 years ago, and humans gathered wild barleys and “primitive wheats” like einkorn and emmer as long as 100,000 years ago. Einkorn and emmer are prehistoric grains that do not shed their indigestible hull when threshed, so require additional processing for consumption.      

Above: Bakers extraordinaire—Shaun Duffy (The Grain Shed) and Angela Kore (Ethos Bakery), who both use Palouse Heritage landrace grains and proper baking techniques to create healthy breads that are absolutely delicious!

Gliadins are the proteins associated with autoimmune celiac disease that affects approximately 1% of the population in the US and Europe, and with non-celiac wheat sensitivities that affect about 4 to 6%. There has been no documented increase in the incidence of celiac disease in recent decades, although it may be diagnosed more accurately today. Contrary to some outrageous claims in recent popular literature, gliadins are not the by-product of grain breeding since the 1960s for shorter, more high-yielding wheats. The deeper root systems of landrace (pre-hybridized) heritage varieties do contribute to nutritional benefits in heritage flours, but both gliadins and glutenins have been basic components of grain chemistry for millennia.

The rate of wheat sensitivities has been correlated with such factors as shorter fermentation processing, refined flour (vs. higher fiber and whole grain) milling, and the proliferation of chemicals and other environmental changes that foster auto-immune reactions. Emmer and einkorn and nutritionally dense landrace grains like Turkey Red wheat and Purple Egyptian barley cause less reaction in many individuals with grain sensitivities. Higher levels of calcium, phosphorus, other essential minerals and vitamins in these heritage varieties likely contribute to their rich flavor profiles. In other words, the vast majority of the population—over 90%, can benefit nutritionally, and deliciously, from properly processed grain products.

Climate Change — Back in the Day

We’re still trying to figure out the climate patterns after an unusually hard winter of 2019 that brought record snowfall to our part of the world, following by virtually no precipitation this past winter. Back in the day when the fortunes of harvest meant the difference between a local population’s prospect of plenty or privation for an entire year, an atmosphere of intense anticipation stirred across the countryside as summer beckoned. For the small tenant farmers of medieval times, several acres the harvest required the labor of all able-bodied family members from older children to adults. On the manorial estates of England and France, workers could number more than 200 so the harvest could be completed within the few prime weeks of summer between the kernel’s full ripeness and risk of damage from sprout or threat of rotting. Forces of nature that had brought forth bounty in the fields could also conspire to ruin crops in late summer with shattering hail, incessant rain, or felling winds, torching entire fields by lightning, or with a plague of all-consuming locusts. Fasts and feasts of the medieval church followed a sacred rhythm of agrarian wholeness represented by a liturgical calendar in recognition of parishioners’ reliance upon divine sustenance and protection from forces beyond mortal control.

Johann Hans, Celebration of the Harvest Festival in Ulm (1817), Lithograph, 9 ½ x 13 ¼ inches; Columbia Heritage Collection

Ulm’s grand medieval Ulmer Münster church and Münsterplatz are depicted in an early nineteenth century print that indicates the vulnerability and devotion of the populace in the wake of the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The Northern Hemisphere’s subsequent “Year without a Summer” with recurrent rains and cooler temperatures led to the catastrophic crop failures and famine in central Europe. With the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and return of the climate to more normal conditions by 1817, city folk and farmers alike gave thanks and renewed harvest celebrations  throughout the land. In Frankfurt Pastor Gerhard Friederich led worshippers in a grand July Erntedankefest with prayers and hymns; Johann Hans’s Celebration of the Harvest Festival in Ulm depicts a similar event in that southern German city with verse about the calamity:

It was a sad year, a year of sorrow.

The poor spoke with tears every morning:

“Where do I find bread for my children today?”

The joy had been veiled, hidden.

Wherever one went, it was still and deathly.

“Oh open your heart, Mother Earth,” we begged,

“That we may be helped!”

And see, a beautiful day has come,

Joyous laughter has returned to all.

Plenty is Revealed, Beautiful Upon the Earth

Harvesting Heritage Grain Plots with Family “Volunteers”

We’ve had great fun here at the farm watching family members tend the heritage grain plot trials near the old farmhouse which allows us to determine which grains adapt well to our part of the country. Among the varieties we have grown are White and Red Lammas wheats that owe their enduring folk name to medieval Anglo-Saxon Lammastide (Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mas, “Loaf Mass”) of offerings traditionally held in early August when priests blessed the first ripe wheat. This annual commemoration’s antecedent included the sober rites of Celtic Luhgúhnadh, or the Celtic Sun god “Lugh’s Assembly,” which took place on August 1, when Scottish Gaelic Lùnastal (Welsh Gwl Awst—the Feast of August) was also observed.

In ancient Celtic folklore, Lugh established the festival to honor his foster mother, Talantiu, the “Great One of the Earth,” for dying from exhaustion after clearing forest for land to cultivate. By the early Middle Ages the festival came to include tribal assemblies attended by the High King, sporting contests, trade fairs, and other special events. The modern English word “earth” attests to these early peoples’ sacred regard for the land since the term is derived from Hertha, the Celtic goddess of the soil. (The word “harvest” is from Old English hærfest—“autumn,” the time described by the tenth century Menologium as “…[W]ela byð geywed fægere on foldan, or when “Plenty is revealed,  beautiful upon the earth.”)

Harvest Home in Sandomir (Poland)

Jozef Lienkowicz, Les Costumes du Peuple Polonais (Leipzig, 1841)

Columbia Heritage Collection

Early religious groups adapted these gatherings and vocabulary to the changing conditions of early medieval life and the new faith. Linguists trace the word “bread” (Nordic brøt) to Proto-Indo-European bhreu of northern Europe, a word suggesting the bubbling of leavened bread, the boiling of broth, and the brewing of beer. This northern term implies a process, while Mediterranean Latin’s word for loaf, panis (and derivatives French pain, Italian pane) emphasizes the end product. Medieval harvest festivals were commonly held throughout Europe for several days in late summer or fall depending on local traditions and after the crops had been substantially gathered. Folks of all ages but young people in particular looked forward to these spirited events as a time to don traditional costume, socialize, and engage in amusements after months of toil in the fields. Known in German as Kerbfest or Kirmes (Dutch Kermesse), these joyous times typically featured special church and market fairs with strolling minstrels, fellowship and feasting with family and friends and plenty of drink, and evening dances. The revelry is colorfully and sometimes comically depicted in such paintings as Kermis, Peasants Making Merry (1574) by Lucas van Valckenborch (1535-1597), Village Feast (c. 1600) by Marten van Cleve (c. 1527-1581), Brueghel’s The Kermesse of St. George (1628), and David Teniers the Younger’s Peasant Kermis (c. 1665).

Lucas van Valckenborch, Kermis, Peasants Making Merry (1574)

Oil on panel, 14 ½ inches

Danish National Gallery, Copenhagen

The beautifully composed painting Harvest Festival Procession (1826) by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) presents a romanticized view of such an occasion in the German countryside with elements that combine classical and medieval motifs with the artist’s Christian worldview. A celebratory peasant throng bearing grain sheaves follow a raised eagle standard as if a Roman legion marching toward a towering statue of Ceres. Other harvesters continue to labor in a distant field beneath the ruins of a medieval castle. Schinkel’s symbolic works characteristically depict historical and topographical detail in reverence to great epochs through the ages meant to inspire contemporary social renewal.

The painting presents the view of a people who appreciate the sacred bounty of the land which is used to uplift individual spirit and elevate overall area culture.  In many Catholic parishes the church consecration day that commemorated the founding of the church or its patron saint came to added sacred elements to the festival’s old folk traditions—often condemned by clerics, but did not greatly displace them in many areas. Catholic services commemorated the transmission of supernatural power upon a place of worship and featured a lengthy liturgical Mass with Holy Communion of wine and white bread. Protestant Kirchwiehen also involved solemn ceremony but as a sacred dedication and without the metaphysical connotations.

Scythes, Sickles, and Mr. Tusser

A vivid memory from my Palouse Country boyhood is watching Dad cut tall grasses and weeds around our farmyard with an exceedingly old scythe. He was fond of saying, “There’s a right way and a wrong way” (to just about everything), and I remember him showing my brother and I how to properly hold the handles (“nibs”) and set a rhythm to the cutting. Early cradle scythes appeared in the thirteenth century and are depicted in paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c. 1525-1569). These featured a small half-circle loop attached to the base of the handle that caught the entire mowed gavel that was dropped at the end of each stroke for gathering into piles. Some ten swaths by an experienced fieldworker typically provided enough stalks to fashion a sheaf about one foot in diameter, and a long day’s labor with a scythe kept keen could cover from one to two acres depending on field conditions. A customary fieldworker echelon of four reapers followed by a binder could then harvest about five to six acres per day. The improved cradle scythe featuring a long scythe blade connected to four to six long wooden ribs that could hold several swaths eventually appeared in nineteenth century America. Its more substantial cuttings were then dropped in the stubble to be bundled and placed into rows of shocks. Using the more modern method, a single cradler-bundler pair could cover about the same area as the medieval five-member team.

Cradle Scythe (c. 1890), Columbia Heritage Collection

In medieval times, a landowner typically appointed a bailiff to preside over the day-to-day operations of the manor’s agricultural enterprises. Reporting to the bailiff were the reeve (Old English gerefa), the workers’ representative in civil affairs, a hayward (heggeward) responsible for safeguarding fields of hay and grain from theft and roaming livestock, and harvest overseer (“lord”) who urged timely completion in Thomas Tusser’s sixteenth century poem, “The End of Harvest.”

COME home, lord, singing,

Come home, corn bringing.

'Tis merry in hall,

Where beards wag all.

Once had thy desire,

Pay workman his hire:

Let none be beguil'd,

Man, woman, nor child.

Thank God ye shall,

And adieu for all.

 Tusser’s classic was among the most popular printed works in Elizabethean England and reflects his own experience as a small farmer. Some proverbs on thrift and country life that appear in his verse may not have been original with him, but appear for the first time in such writings from the period and also testify to harvest labor and equipment from the time (“Threshe sede and go fanne”). Tusser also offers qualified support to the era’s controversial enclosure of open fields which was widely opposed by rural commoners who had long benefited from access to the commons (“champion farming”). But Tusser saw economic benefits for all from individualized stewardship of natural resources that would improve efficiency and diversify crop production (“More profit is quieter found / Where pastures in severall be; / Of one seely acre of ground / Than champion maketh of three”).

The “Cerealization” of Europe

The story of farming is one of usual significance throughout rural America, and certainly to urban consumers year-round, let alone in times like these when stocking grocery store shelves is threatened by pandemics and market dislocations. Self-reliant agriculture had long been practiced by natives peoples in North and South America, and since ancient times in the Eastern Hemisphere. When European immigrants began flocking to the United States in the early 1800s they brought many Old World farming traditions that harken back to practices introduced a thousand years ago. A gradual shift in the early medieval period away from annual and two-year cropping in Europe that exhausted soil fertility led to improved cereal production across the continent. The three-year open field rotation system (German Verzelgung, Russian trekhpol’ye) became widespread during the thirteenth century and increased crop yields from one-half to two-thirds in many parts of central and eastern Europe with heavier soils and higher rainfall than in the south. While variable local geographic conditions allow for only generalizations, the triennial system did begin a widespread continental shift from mixed farming to the production of specific grains on designated fields.

This “cerealization” of Europe was directly related to the era’s population rise and led to the emergence of urban centers and new social classes. Grain yields from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries remained negligible by present standards, however, with wheat averaging some eight to twelve bushels per acre, barley ten to fifteen, and oats fifteen to twenty. (Modern non-irrigated yields are commonly five to six times higher.) England’s medieval standard measure of distance, the furlong, was established at 220 yards, or about how far a team of oxen could make a furrow by pulling a plow before needing to rest. A width of forty-four yards—twenty-two trips down and back, came to represent a full day’s work to define the present acre of 4, 840 square yards.

Pietro de Crescenzi, “Farmers Harvesting Crops, ”Opus Ruralium Commmodorum (1471), Vollbehr Collection, Rare Book Collection, Library of Congress

Field size varied widely depending on local norms of peasant holdings, topography, and soil conditions. The area of a “full holding” varied considerably in early medieval Europe but was generally understood to be the amount of land and livestock necessary to support a three-generation family living under the same roof. The year’s culminating grain harvest served the three imperative needs of sustenance for family and livestock, seed for future crops, and seigneurial tax. Over time conventional units of area (English “hide,” German Hufe, French mansus) came to be associated with obligations to seigneur and state, though definitions reflect considerable stratification among villagers. In central Europe, for example, a prosperous Austrian peasant head of household with both full holding and a tenancy might have a hundred acres, while similar status in Bohemia represented sixty acres, but half that area in England and Hungary. Subdividing over generations led to numerous fractional holdings, cotters with only a house and garden, and large numbers of landless laborers.