Goodness, Grain, and Humankind— Thoughts Concerning Ukraine and Our Nation’s Founders

Cabrini Brothers Plaster Bas-Relief (c. 1910)
After Emmanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851)
Endicott-St. John Middle School; Endicott, Washington

How happy to think to our self when conscious of our deeds, that we started from a principle of rectitude, from conviction of the goodness of the thing [freedom] itself, from motive of the good that will come to humankind.
—Thaddeus Kosciuszko to General O. H. Williams; February 11, 1783

Day after day throughout all twelve years in the stately three-story brick school in rural hometown Endicott, notable figures from America’s past stared down at us from each classroom in the form of substantial bas-relief sculptures. Bearing the incised manufacturer name “Caproni Brothers” of Boston, these substantial plaster works resembled carved marble and spoke to the value placed on public education and art by members of our farming community who built the school in 1911. The three largest Caproni masterpieces hung against a wall of the third floor auditorium and included the famous scene Washington Crossing the Delaware which was painted some seventy years after the event by German-American artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816-1868). The painter had returned for a time to his homeland and sought to support the wave of democratic revolts against European monarchies in the late 1840s. Leutze painted several other American Revolutionary War views including Mrs. Schuyler Burning Her Wheat Fields (1852) which is now held by the Los Angeles County Art Museum.

Notable battles that changed the course of world history were famously fought on fields of grain including Caesar’s defeat of Pompei in 48 BC on Greece’s Thessalian Plain at Pharsalos (Farsala—birthplace of Achilles), and English King Henry’s victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years’ War. That large military engagements took place across vast rural areas is unsurprising and came to be associated with heroic sacrifice and symbolic harvests of souls. The Schuyler Wheatfield scene is especially notable for depicting an incident associated with the 1777 Battle of Saratoga that is considered the turning point of the Revolutionary War.

We learn in school about the nation’s Founders—men and women like Washington and Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams, James and Dolly Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and others who pledged their “sacred fortunes” to procure a free if imperfect nation based on democratic values. As part of this effort begun nearly 250 years ago other influential names are also familiar—army heroes Marquis de Lafayette of France, and stern Baron von Steuben of Prussia who became General Washington’s Chief of Staff and helped bolster patriot forces amidst the baleful conditions of Valley Forge. Another formidable if lesser-known foreign officer in freedom’s cause was cavalry general Thaddeus Kosciuszko (ko-choose-ko) who played a leading role in the Continental victory at Saratoga.

Emmanuel Leutz, Mrs. Schuyler Burning Her Wheat Fields (1852)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Painting at the distance of many decades, Leutze took liberties for his masterpieces of patriotic romanticism and the dramatic view of harried Catherine Schuyler, wife of Continental General Philip Schuyler and in-laws of Alexander Hamilton, combines elements of fact and legend. She is shown clad in red, white, and blue setting fire to a field of wheat on the family’s Hudson River estate presumably in September of 1777 to prevent its harvest by British troops approaching in the distance. The subsequent defeat of British General Burgoyne at the nearby Barber Wheatfield during the Battle of Saratoga in early October is considered the turning point of the American cause. The painting is remarkable not only for its depiction of a female figure in heroic wartime action, but she is shown being assisted by an African-American boy who carries a metal lamp.

Kosciuszko was a Polish nobleman and idealist, whose own privileged position in life contrasted with the democratic values he came to champion in peacetime and war. Commissioned a brigadier general by the Continental Congress and later made a member of the American Philosophical Society through Benjamin Franklin’s support, Kosciuszko nevertheless returned to Europe and helped lead the fight against autocracy in Poland as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the 1790s. Russia with far superior forces under Catherine the Great eventually prevailed against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Turks in order to gain strategic access to the warm water Black Sea ports. Russia emerged victorious in 1792, and two years later Empress Catherine herself initiated the founding of Odessa which soon became Russia’s third largest city. Russia’s roots in Ukraine stretch back much further as Kyiv is considered Russia’s founding capital and flourished in a cultural Golden Age from the 10th to 12th centuries until its devastation in 1240 by the invading Mongols.

To secure her vast newly acquired southlands from such foreign threats, Catherine instituted one of the largest and most diverse settlement campaigns in European history. Substantial numbers of Armenians, Greeks, Italians, and other ethnic groups were directed to Ukraine to live among native Crimean Tatars and Turkic peoples. Beginning in the 1760s Catherine arranged for the relocation of 27,000 peasants from her native Germany to the lower Volga region, and some 50,000 followed until the 1830s to establish Black Sea colonies throughout Ukraine. Many came in the aftermath of Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812 that inspired Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. A century later the prolific Black Sea German colonists needed more land to farm and faced increasing cultural threats from ascendent Slavic influences. Some chose to relocate as their ancestors had done, and many found new homes in America’s fertile farming districts—the Chesapeake Peninsula’s red loam country of Maryland and Delaware, southeastern New York’s “black dirt” area, the vast Midwest’s Great Plains, Pacific Northwest’s Columbia Plateau, and Canada’s prairie provinces. Black Sea German Mennonites brought Crimean “Turkey” Red wheat seed to Kansas in the 1870s which revolutionized American grain production and breadmaking.

Massey-Siemens Family Black Sea German Samovar
(c. 1890)
Palouse Heritage Collection

Those who appreciate this heritage have important reasons to be grateful their ancestors emigrated. European borders closed in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I, the Communist Revolution and three-year Russian Civil War followed until 1921, and Stalin’s brutal war on religion and campaign of collectivization led to Ukraine’s catastrophic Holodomor that claimed some eight million lives in the 1920’s and 30’s. Hitler’s invasion of the USSR caused the death of 27 million people during World War II. (American World War II casualties were about one million.) No wonder Timothy Snyder’s excellent 2010 chronicle of this era and place carries the disturbing title Bloodlands.

 Eastern European immigrants and survivors came, and substantially remained, because Americans both new and old found fidelity in the ideas expressed in Kosciuszko’s 1783 letter about “deeds,” “principle,” “conviction,” and “goodness.” These terms may be variously debated today, but they did not have vague meanings to those who wrote or heard them. And while they have been lived out in ways that excluded many since the nation’s founding, they have provided a framework for freedom, security, and economic prosperity unknown on a national scale in previous history. Such core ideas are threatened today because of extremism on both sides of a political continuum that values personal benefit and perceived “rightness” above the common good—an inversion of American First Principles.

To be sure, Jefferson’s expression “pursuit of happiness” is eighteenth-century code talk for private enterprise which forms the basis of modern economic development. But in the same breath he writes of “promoting the general welfare” since he, Kosciuszko, and the Founders understood liberty to be the use of freedom to promote national wellbeing, versus licentiousness as use of freedom for selfish power and gain. The peoples of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus faced a momentous decision in 1991 when in the wake of the USSR’s collapse they voted to declare independence. Much has been written about the litany of events and political vacillations that have ensued since then. May the cause of Kosciuszko yet prevail on both sides of the Atlantic, and peace and prosperity return to the people of Ukraine’s fertile Black Earth grainlands.

Thanksgiving Traditions—A Heritage of Gratitude Part Two

Traditional American Thanksgiving commemorations are heir to influences contributed by early Pilgrim colonists and their Native American neighbors, as well as later European immigrant groups with their harvest feast customs. Longer growing seasons in North America led to later commemorations of harvest festivals, and today’s popular county and state fairs in late summer and fall continue this tradition of agrarian spectacle, revelry, and fellowship. Nineteenth century historian William DeLoss Love’s study of early America indicates that both the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonists irregularly held days of fasting and humiliation as well as thanksgiving.

Colonial Williamsburg Lammas Wheat Harvest
(Seed stock provided by Palouse Heritage)
Ed Schultz Photograph

Love describes one of the first Plymouth references to a thanksgiving feast involving charity to the less fortunate on December 22, 1636 in Reverend John Lothrop’s congregation at Scituate. Such celebrations among the New England colonists do not appear to have become annual events until about the middle of the 17th century, and not until the 1660s is frequent reference found to gratitude for “the fruits of the earth.” Customary communal fare on such occasions included venison and fish, clams and oysters, squash and beans, and berry puddings and apple pie. While cranberries were also popular, consumption of any turkey at these early events apparently was incidental. 

President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789, the year of his inauguration. He designated the last Thursday in November “to be devoted by the people of these States to… the Beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” This time was associated with the growing New England Thanksgiving tradition and observations of Christian Whitsuntide and the Jewish Feast of Ingathering (Sukkot, or Tabernacles). Some governors and denominations, however, objected to civil involvement in religious affairs so the day came to be celebrated according to regional preferences, or not at all.

One of the 19th century’s most tireless advocates for a true nationwide commemoration of Thanksgiving was longtime Ladies’ Magazine Boston editor Sarah Josepha Hale. Launching her crusade in 1827, Hale wrote hundreds of letters to public officials to further the cause, and in 1863 composed an influential editorial offering explicit association between Thanksgiving and Old Testament tradition: “Can we not then, following the appointment of Jehovah in the ‘Feast of Weeks,’ or Harvest Festival, establish our yearly Thanksgiving as a permanent American National Festival which shall be celebrated on the last Thursday in November in every State of the Union?”  Hale’s magazine provided a forum for many of era’s finest writers whose works, like these lines from Longfellow’s “Thanksgiving,” she featured to advance her abiding campaign.

Hale’s plea reached the White House, and on October 3, 1863 President Lincoln designated the last Thursday in November as an annual national observance of the holiday. (Since 1879, Thanksgiving in Canada has been celebrated on the second Monday in October.) Lincoln’s proclamation, issued in the midst of the Civil War, attests to his regard for sacred responsibilities: “The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful presence of almighty God.”

Many Thanksgiving hymns evoke agricultural images with spiritual significance, as with Henry Alford’s “Come Ye Faithful People, Come,” (1844) which remains one of the most popular of all such festival songs:

Come, ye faithful people, come
Raise the song of Harvest-Home.
Grant a harvest Lord, that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.

By the late 19th century, many commemorations of Harvest-Home in America had become conflated with Thanksgiving in ways that still celebrated agrarian bounty and labor in the context of divine blessing. Genteel Harvest-Home “socials” were a regular feature of Northwest rural school programs well into the 1990s. (Harvest-Home also graced the nameplate of a full-rigged barque that regularly plied Puget Sound ports in the 1870s and ‘80s to load flour, lumber, and other cargo for California markets.)

Edwin Molander, Grain Sheaf Wall Panel (1949)
Trinity Lutheran Church, Endicott, Washington

American traditions of Thanksgiving have been influenced by an enriching cultural milieu including colonial New England commemorations, European Harvest-Home customs, and biblical observances of harvest feasts. Efforts in the early years of the republic and during the Civil War were designed to promote national unity through formal proclamation of the holiday, but aspects of the commemoration had long lived in the population’s experience, and in an array of other folk traditions later brought by immigrants hoping to find new opportunity for a safe and prosperous life. The Jewish Feast of the Harvest, Harvest-Home, and Thanksgiving are rooted in the descent, humble recognition that deliverance from want and tyranny is a hope common to all humanity, and finds its expression in prayers of thanks for the Creator’s blessings, and in the festive, inclusive fellowship of family, friends, and newcomers.

Thanksgiving Traditions—A Heritage of Gratitude Part One

You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread…, and the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; and the Feast of the Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in your labors from the field. --Exodus 23:15-16

Harvests in, the weather cools, colorful leaves swirl about, and Thanksgiving’s approach turns thoughts to family gatherings, feasting, and football games. Growing up on our small farm in eastern Washington’s Palouse Country, our Thanksgiving was one of the few times we left home to journey a hundred miles north toward Canada to our maternal grandparents remote home in the thickly forested Pend Oreille highlands. To this day Grandma Peterson’s bread and pork dressing with grated carrots and beets lives on as a favorite holiday recipe. A very devout soul, she personified thanksgiving and shared the bounty of their substantial gardens—as well as hand-me-down children’s clothes, firewood, baked goods, and other necessities—with families near and far. Thanksgiving’s approach has led me to think again about the holiday’s origins in ancient times and its association with early American history.

Harvesting Palouse Heritage “Eden Amber” (2021)
An Heirloom Mesopotamian Hard White Bread Wheat

Old Testament Israel’s Feast of Harvest (Shavuot), one of nation’s three principal holidays, was a joyous event celebrated in Jerusalem on the fiftieth day after Passover. Blessed with favorable Mediterranean growing conditions on the Plain of Esdraelon and in nearby fertile valleys, the ancient Hebrews’ barley harvest generally commenced with the beginning of the dry season in April and early May, followed by the gathering of wheat and lentils into June. The fiftieth-day spring harvest festival, also known as the Feast of Weeks (later Christian Pentecost), marked the completion of the grain harvest season and commemorated divine provision for the people with Promised Land bounty.

The subsequent Feast of Ingathering was held in Jerusalem several weeks later to celebrate harvest of olives, grapes, figs, and other fruits. It also involved Temple offerings of sheaves, bread, and flour for the priests, recitation of the Hallel psalms (113-118) and readings from the Book of Ruth, joyful dances, and splendid communal feasts. Historians Douglas Neel and Joel Pugh note that activities associated with these holidays and the biblical context of their pronouncements offered two important themes to Jewish and later Christian observers: thanksgiving for divine blessing and a bountiful land, and the resulting social responsibilities to the less fortunate.  

Cultures throughout the world have commemorated the life-giving blessing of harvest throughout recorded history with traditions evident in religious ceremonies and stories handed down through the generations. According to Jewish folklore, Noah’s resourceful wife resorted to unique combinations of ingredients as the Ark’s provisions dwindled near the end of its voyage. What in Turkish cuisine is known as “Noah’s Pudding,” or ashura, customarily features various sweet mixtures of pearled barley and bulgur wheat with beans, chickpeas, dried fruits, and nuts. Nutritious black emmer has been called “Prophet’s Wheat” from a tradition suggesting Noah fed it to animals on the Ark. Black emmer was one of many Middle Eastern grains introduced to the Pacific Northwest in the 1890s by legendary USDA “plant explorer” Mark Carleton who sought varieties from regions throughout the world with climates and soil conditions similar to various areas of the Columbia Plateau. 

Contemporary Wheat Weavings
Fern Enos; Colfax, Washington

Traditions honoring the vitality of grain perpetuated the Old World craft of wheat-weaving with artfully twisted shapes are still featured at county fairs throughout America. Agrarian folklorist Rene Peschel traces the origins of Northwest wheat-weaving to the 1974 centennial commemoration of Mennonite immigration to Kansas from Russia. Midwestern Mennonite women wove mementoes with Russian “Turkey” Red wheat and the following year Moses Lake resident Phyllis Franz learned the skill from a Mennonite visitor the area and taught it to members of her fellowship and other friends. One of the most spectacular examples of the craft is the life-size “Wheat Lady” (1997) by Aileen Warren and Jackie Penner of Dayton, Washington. The pair wove a grain dress from 225 feet of wheat straw and embellished the effigy with over 900 hand-tied decorative knots and 2500 heads of wheat.

Aileen Warren and Jackie Penner, Wheat Lady “Corn Dolly” (1997)
Straight and braided straw with 2500 heads of wheat
Washington Association of Wheat Growers

Ethos Stone Mill and Barnard Griffin Winery Partner with Palouse Heritage for Tasting

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, Palouse Heritage partnered with Ethos Stone Mill and Barnard Griffin Winery for a festive evening of dining and fellowship to a capacity crowd this past week at the Richland winery. Moderated by our Ethos friends Angela and Hana, entries included flavorful pasta, stew, and other dishes made with our Purple Egyptian barley and Sonoran Gold wheat. Winery hosts Bob Griffin and Deborah Barnard added to the affair with fascinating commentary on Barnard Griffin Riesling, Merlot, port-style “Rapport,” and other wines from Red Mountain and other area vineyards that were deliciously paired with the servings.

Head Ethos baker Hana and founder Angela led guests on a culinary presentation on a variety of grains with participants tasting a colorful array crackers, breads, and other foods. (Angela is seen in the picture standing next to Seattle artist Jim Gerlitz’s Palouse Colony Farm harvest painting.) Using a “flavor wheel” more commonly associated with fine wines and coffees, guests completed a sensory chart that drew attention to each variety’s unique flavor profile. Sonoran drew praise for being the most “buttery” while Purple Egyptian registered indications of “nutty” and “chocolaty”!

Again this year Ethos Bakery & Stone Mill is offering an array of artisan breads and special baked foods for Thanksgiving for pickup up at the Keene Road location. Order early in person, online, or call (509) 942-8417.

Among our favorites are the homestyle brioche and baguette, crouton stuffing with sage and sausage, rustic Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, and seasonal cranberry sage & pumpkin seed sourdough bread. The pies—made with Palouse Heritage Sonoran Gold flour—are out of this world and include roasted pecan with a hint of bourbon, classic double-crusted apple with Granny Smith and Pink Lady, and of course spiced Winter Luxury pumpkin pie.

Our thanks to Angela, Hana, and the entire Ethos Bakery family and Barnard Griffin Winery.

Amber Eden Grain and a Memorable Harvest

On a collecting trip to a popular Persian grain market over a century ago, near the location of ancient Sumer in present Iraq, a USDA official found a vendor of an exceptional bread wheat said by locals to have come from the Garden of Eden. The American likely thought it an entertaining story with little significance. But the grain was tested soon after it arrived here in the US and found to be something indeed spectacular—a hard white landrace (pre-hybridized heritage) wheat. Virtually all wheat flours used for breadmaking come from hard red grain which is healthy when milled as whole grain to preserve the nutrient-dense germ and bran as well as interior endosperm. For this reason whole grain breads tend to be dark compared to white breads typically made from those made from flour that has been sifted to remove much of the kernel.

The existence of this exceedingly rare hard white “Eden” grain offered the prospect of whole grain nutrition in a light-colored loaf! And after considerable searching facilitated by friends at WSU’s Bread Lab in Mt. Vernon, our Palouse Colony-Ethos Stone Mill team was able to procure a sample from a European seedbank. After several years of patient increase, we were pleased to harvest a sufficient crop of this remarkable grain this summer that we will soon be marketed as flour.

Harvesting Hard White Amber Eden Wheat
Palouse Colony Farm (August 2021)

The Bible and other ancient literatures open with divine creation of the world and living things including seed-bearing plants. Genesis 1:11-12 states, “And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees….’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds…. And God saw that it was good.” The concept of Creator as First Agrarian offers two related guiding principles for humanity’s sacred relationship to the land: (1) The earth and its bounty is to be treated respectfully (e.g., Psalm 24:1); and (2) people are to cultivate it responsibly (Genesis 2:15). Grains, grapes, and olives—the so-called Mediterranean triad—dominated the Hebrew diet (Deuteronomy 7:12-13, II Chronicles 31:5-6) and provided a wide range of flavorful, nutritious foods made from flour, wine, and oil. So heavy was their reliance on bread that the Hebrew term for it, lehem, is synonymous with food in general (Genesis 28:20, Ruth 1:6, Psalm 132:15).

Whole Grain Health—at Home and Abroad

With all the challenges that come in the raising, processing, and marketing heritage grains for baking and brewing, large cohort research validation of health benefits is noteworthy. Some small group studies have been conducted in the US, but these have been largely confined to small group studies conducted by groups like Rodale, Weston Price, and others with relatively limited funds and public impact. However, the American Medical Association has recently reported on significant research conducted over seven years in France, the French National Institute of Health/NIHR NutriNet-Sante Cohort Study (2020), that explored associations in some 69,000 participants with foods and incidence of cancer.

Whole Grain Crimson Turkey and Rye Loaves with Ethos Stone Mill Flour Ethos Bakery, Richland, Washington

The findings show strong correlations between those who consume "cleaner" foods (low chemical input, organic) and lower cancer rates as well as other positive health consequences. Commentary by the US-based Environmental Working Group points out that availability of certified organic foods is cost-prohibitive to many consumers, so they should consider healthy nonconventional farming practices that avoid widespread use of pesticides and artificial inputs as well as whole grain and high fiber foods rather than highly processed ones that often contain artificial additives. EWG president Ken Cook points out the value of future studies that could also explore possible links to ADHD, food allergies, and neurological diseases.

Agrarian Landscapes as Serious Art

Jacob Ruisdael (1629-1682) was born to a prominent Haarlem artist family and became the preeminent landscapist of the Dutch Golden Age. His sweeping canvases included numerous coastal and Scandinavian mountain scenes, and twenty-seven views of grain fields also survive as paintings and drawings. In works like Wheat Fields (c. 1670), Ruisdael’s composition features a low horizon crowned with characteristic sweeping sky. In the foreground a traveler approaches a woman and child along a road leading between fields of ripened grain as if the awesome forces of nature dwarf humanity’s presence and manifest the inherent spirituality of creation.  The paintings of influential French artists Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude Lorrain (c. 1600-1665) also significantly contributed to recognition of landscapes as aesthetically and morally serious subjects even if referencing scenes from classical antiquity and the Bible. Poussin’s allegorical Summer (1660) shows a harvest scene with Ruth and Boaz instead of Ceres. The work of Ruisdael, Poussin, and Lorrain became well known in their lifetimes and would significantly influence the painting of the English Romantics, French Barbizon school, and American Hudson River artists.

Jacob Ruisdael, Wheat Fields (c. 1670)
Oil on canvas, 38 ⅜ x 51 ¼ inches
Metropolitan Art Museum, New York; Wikimedia Commons

Flemish painter David Teniers became one the foremost masters of the country scenes and clothed his field workers in the subtle earth tones favored by Brueghel and later artists like Millet. His canvases imparted the humanity of rural life with individuals even in worker groups and crowds painted with distinguishable characteristics. Teniers’ art became so synonymous with peasant genre that for the next century and beyond the name Teniers was a pseudonym for rustic views. The prolific painter married into the Brueghel family in 1637 when he wed Anna Brueghel, daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder. (Peter Paul Rubens, her legal guardian following the death of Anna’s father, served as witness at the wedding.) In the 1660s Teniers acquired a rural retreat, Drij Toren (Three Towers), at Perk in the Flanders countryside and often used the area as a backdrop for more Arcadian idylls, likely inspired by the bucolic writings of Virgil and Horace. Among his most notable of his many summer paintings are The Reaping (c. 1644), Peasant Kermis (c. 1665), and stately View of Drij Toren at Perk, with David Teniers’ Family (c. 1660), which shows a brigade of peasants harvesting grain beyond the family’s graceful pose.

Nicolas Poussin, Summer—Ruth and Boaz (1660)
Oil on canvas, 46 x 63 inches
The Louvre, Paris; Wikimedia Commons

Throughout the eighteenth century many of his paintings served as patterns for tapestries and other creations. Michel Picquenot (1747-1808) and other French engravers executed splendid reproductions of his works as seen in Picquenot’s extensive “cabinet” series. (The term referred to a room of curiosities in a château or country house.) For Du Cabinet de Mr. Poullian (1780), Picquenot likely based his ambitious recreation on one of Teniers’ many gaudy harvest festival paintings. The foreground shows feasting, dancing to a bagpiper, and other peasant revelry presumedly on the grounds of a tavern or inn. In the distance a small group of harvesters bind and shock a remaining stand of grain.