Amber Waves of Grain

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
"America the Beautiful," Katharine Lee Bates

Except for the part about purple mountains, this is so true now in Kansas in June! There is something very satisfying to me to see the wheat fields in this area beginning to ripen. When I drive between towns, I keep watching for the first evidence that harvest has begun, and sometimes make a special trip into the rural community where I grew up so that I can see the familiar process once again. Just this past weekend, I was able to do that. I get a thrill out of seeing the wide reel pulling the grain into the combine's inner workings and thrusting the straw out the back end. When the bin on the combine is full, the grain is augured into a waiting wagon or truck and hauled to the elevator. City kids visit the bakery to see flour turned into bread; I like to see rain and sunshine and hard work turned into amber waves of grain!

But I'm especially interested in "red" waves of grain. The reddish-brown fields were probably planted with one of the varieties of Turkey Red Wheat. Some lines etched in the marker placed along US-50 east of Walton by the Kansas State Historical Society tell the story of that wheat.

Children in Russia hand-picked the first seeds of this famous winter wheat for Kansas. They belonged to Mennonite Colonies preparing to emigrate from the steppes to the America prairies. A peace-loving sect, originally from Holland, the Mennonites had gone to the Crimea from Prussia in 1790 when Catherine the Great offered free lands, military exemption and religious freedom. They prospered until these privileges were threatened in 1871. Three years later they emigrated to Kansas, where the Santa Fe R.R. offered thousands of acres on good terms in McPherson, Harvey, Marion & Reno counties, and where the legislature passed a bill which exempted religious objectors from military service. Within a month after landing in New York the Mennonites planted the red-gold grains their children had selected. The harvest was the first of the great crops of hard Turkey Red and its derivatives that have made Kansas the Granary of the Nation.

Although not a descendant of this particular group, I have a certain sense of pride in the fact that these were "my kind of people," God-fearing farm folk!

It's clear to me how dependent we are on farmers, and how dependent they are on the weather and other mercies of God. "He never left them [the nations] without evidence of himself and his goodness. For instance, he sends you rain and good crops and gives you food and joyful hearts.” (Acts 14:17)

Those waves of grain in the fields are a reminder to me of God's faithfulness!

MaryMartha

Scripture quotation is taken from The Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. United States of America. All rights reserved.