Know matter how you look it, pioneer life was extremely hard living. No one had running water in their homes, all dirty laundry was washed by washboards or hand scrubbing, and they traveled by horse and wagon to locations. Traveling 100 miles could take a week for you to travel by wagon alone.
Most pioneers who traveled by covered wagon to their new land, were now living in at least a sod house or claim shanty. Hopefully they were in a shanty before having to cook a massive dinner for threshers. Thresher dinners sound a bit ominous, but they really are not. Thresher came from the term threshing as in threshing wheat. Wheat crops were a main staple in a lot of farming households, and they grew large crops of wheat. Wheat carefully put away in food storage can give you enough breads and baked goods to eat all winter long. Threshers were considered important people in a pioneer’s life.
Back in the old 1800s, threshers traveled around to each farm offering their services to thresh the fields of wheat for each farm. Often there was a thresher machine involved, but still it was hot, sweaty, sticky work that lasted for days. And after the work was finished, the farm would hold a thresher dinner to thank the men for their hard work.
Threshing burns a whole lot of calories kind of like haying a field by hand, so each farm cooked a huge dinner. Thresher dinners can consist of anything good tasting and with lots of calories and usually traditional fair. Despite all the high tech farming machines we have now, Amish have kept this tradition alive even today. Amish do everything by hand and still work hot hours in a field. And they pride themselves on original homemade items.
Here is a traditional thresher dinner sampler:
Kettle Full of Bean and Ham Soup Roasted Wild Turkey Jack Rabbit Mashed Potatoes Green Beans Baked Beans with Salt Pork Butter Baked Turnips Corn Cakes Biscuits with Tomato Preserves Freshly Churned Butter Fresh Baked Bread Shoofly Pie Zucchini Pie