Meri's Musings

In the days of yore, back when the wheat was harvested manually by dozens of men all working a field until it was nothing but stubble before they moved on to the next farm, the workers would get powerfully hungry. They were, after all, expending a lot of energy  harvesting grain and possibly fruit, as well. Back in the 1890s and probably for a couple of decades after that, the Walla Walla Valley harvest crews were fed meals from cook wagons like this one. These wagons were mobile kitchens -- kind of like the taco wagons you see in some parking lots at lunch time. I suspect the one in the picture was a later model, because it's a "horseless" wagon. But it was staffed by women, sometimes farmer's wives and sometimes widows or single women needing some income. They spent their days cooking hearty fare to feed the hungry men bringing in the crops. My great-grandmother Wilhelmina "Minnie" Blomgren Nelson was one of those widows. Her first husband Joh...