By Carilynn Coombs

Being from a rural background many people can relate to food being the center of every celebration. In fact, that is normally my favorite part of our family gatherings. There happens to always be my favorite desserts from my mom and my husband’s mamaw. Additionally, the grape salad my mother-in-law makes is to die for! And while we have these types of get-togethers often, the food festivities that take place this time of year are especially memorable. 

Food has always been the center of celebrations even going back to biblical days including the wedding at Cana. We learned at an early age of the first Thanksgiving and how that tradition has continued for hundreds of years.

As I sit and think about it all this month, and how we celebrate food, I can’t help but catch myself taking the quantity of food available to me for granted. And I have a farmer to thank for that.  Not just my husband, my father-in-law, and my husband’s uncle who all run our dairy farm but farmers I have never met, farmers who take my family into account every day as they plant, grow, and harvest their crops, livestock producers who make sure the meat that goes on my plate at Thanksgiving is the safest in the world.

These people are not only farmers but husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, grandmas, and grandpas. They have just as much at stake with their own family as they do with providing food for everyone else. And I simply want to tell them thank you.

But beyond my little world are multitudes of people who don’t celebrate the same bounty as my family. I think about them, too. While our family farms are feeding us, here at home and our neighbors down the road, we ask more and more for them to feed a hungry world.

They have answered the call as best as they can. Their hours are longer, their debt is larger, but their desire to do what they do is unmatched by long work weeks and the bills they create in maintaining our food supply.

Being able to supply your own food is a blessing but being able to supply food for those who can’t is a calling. It's one that I’m glad our food producers have answered.

To my family’s farmers and all those across our country, I say thank you for the long, hard days you put in and the sacrifices you make for people you know and those you don’t.

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