Harvest Bonanza initiative helps provide food back to farmers
That's the motto behind the Harvest Bonanza, a program that's helped to give food back to farmers in this part of the country for more than a decade.
CARLETON - With harvest season in full swing for farmers across the country, an annual tradition resumed this week in Southeast Nebraska, one designed to help lift some stress from farmers focused on supplying Americans with food.
"It's like we are feeding them in exchange for them feeding us," Bruning-Davenport senior Lauryn Koch summarized.
That's the motto behind the Harvest Bonanza, a program which has helped to give food back to farmers in this part of the country for more than a decade.
It's orchestrated by the team behind Southeast Nebraska radio stations Ol' Red 99.5 and KWBE, in partnership with local businesses - ag-related and otherwise - like the Cargill facility in Carleton, and FFA chapters in nearby schools like Bruning-Davenport to cook, pack, and hand deliver hot dog meals to hard-working farmers across Southeast Nebraska and Northern Kansas.
"We're feeding the people that feed us," said Marion Beckmann, sales director with Ol' Red and KWBE. "Those guys work around the clock. Harvest is stressful, and this is one less thing for farmers and their families to worry about. We just want to keep them going."
The partnerships with the local businesses like Cargill and the FFA chapters like Bruning-Davenport's are essential to making each of these sites able to serve up a hundred-plus hot dogs over the course of a couple of hours. A handful of Cargill employees were in charge of cooking the meat and shuttling help around the grounds, while Koch and seven of her B-D FFA teammates were on hand to help pack up and hand-deliver the bagged meals right to the driver-side door of the dozens of trucks that drove through the Cargill campus to get their farm yields evaluated, weighed, and unloaded.
The theme of the Bruning-Davenport FFA chapter this year is "America's future is still on the farm," an ideal which certainly ties into what Harvest Bonanza is trying to accomplish in Carleton and beyond.
"It just really like shows how the community and ourselves really connect with each other and how we support the community and how the community supports us," said Koch.
The hot dogs were sizzling on Thursday afternoon in Carleton, courtesy of Karpisek's Market in Wilber. They're one of a couple dozen sponsors who help make this initiative possible.
With about 160 meals including hot dogs, drinks and snacks created and delivered over the course of two hours Thursday evening, this is one of the busiest sites on the Harvest Bonanza itinerary. Earlier Thursday, Harvest Bonanza set up shop in Plymouth with the help of FFA students from Tri County to deliver meals at lunchtime.
Up next, the event moves south of the border to Palmer, Kansas, one of a total of 17 stops scheduled for this year's Harvest Bonanza tour before the month, and harvest season, comes to a close. The following is the list of all the locations for this year's Harvest Bonanza - dates and times will be announced when they are finalized.
