10 Harvest Time Traditions to Cherish

Simple & meaningful ways to celebrate the season with your farm family.

There’s a very particular moment every fall when you realize harvest is coming. The date and conditions may change, but that fluttering feeling of anticipation is always the same.

The mornings are getting cooler. The crops have started drying down and everything is turning gold. Someone mentions getting the combine out. Suddenly tools and parts are scattered everywhere again, trucks are coming and going, weather apps are being checked hourly, and every conversation circles back to moisture percentages.

And once harvest actually starts?

Yeah, we'll get everyone in the same room for more than two seconds sometime around Thanksgiving.

Before the long days, late nights, field meals, machinery breakdowns, and endless loads of dusty laundry begin, here at Brambly Hill we like to take a little time to actually celebrate the start of harvest season.

Nothing elaborate: nobody needs yet another thing on their harvest to-do list.

But a few simple traditions incorporated into this busy season make it feel special, even festive for the family, instead of something we simply have to survive.

That said, here's our list of 10 ways to welcome harvest before the combines roll.

Click this link for a complete shoppable list of our favorite tried-and-tested Harvest Season gear.

1. Light a Start-of-Harvest Bonfire

There's something about a bonfire on a cool, cricket-chirpy September evening that officially announces fall and harvest better than anything else.

Invite grandparents or those who help around the farm, roast hot dogs and brats, make s'mores, and enjoy one evening when everyone is still sitting in the same place instead of scattered across various fields and pieces of machinery.

If you have little kids, let them collect sticks, bring out blankets, and stay up just a little later than usual. Because pretty soon bedtime may occasionally happen before the farmers and their help make it home.

Make it a tradition: Keep it simple. Once you have a (rough) sense of your start date, send a simple text, light some logs, and break out the roasting sticks. No need to plan ahead or get fancy: make the spontaneity part of the magic. 

Bonfire favorites: telescoping fire pit sticks, rocking camp chairs, kids safe camp light, retro lantern

2. Stock the Harvest Snack Fridge

Anyone who’s lived through a season knows that harvest requires an astonishing quantity of snacks (and beverages). Translation: gas station or farm supply fare for the unprepared.

Before things get busy, make a list of each family member’s grab-and-go favorites so you can stock the shop fridge before things turn feral. Kids especially like to help with this one. And the look on grandpa’s face when he finds a bulk bag of his favorite farm fleet peanuts or hard candies is priceless.

Add bottled water, electrolyte drinks, cheese or meat sticks, yogurt, sandwich supplies, etc.—whatever your crew will actually grab when "lunch" happens at Whenever O’Clock.

Make it a tradition: Let every family member choose one ridiculous "harvest essential" snack that must remain stocked until the last field is finished.

On-the-go Favorites: YETI coffee mug, YETI rambler large water bottle, Stanley 40oz. water bottle, 

3. Have a Shine & Show Day

If you have a fastidious farmer you probably also have countless hours clocked with a power washer. And while blasting away the summer layer of grime is a standard (for some, dreaded) harvest time chore for adults, it can take on a whole new meaning when presented to kids. 

So, while adults spray the layers from tractors and wagons let the kids set up their own miniature wash bay nearby.

Bring out the bikes, wagons, big wheels, pedal tractors, peg peregos, gators, go-carts, or whatever qualifies as heavy machinery to a toddler.

Buckets. Sponges. Hose. Bubbles. 

Everybody gets their equipment shiny and new for Go-Time.

Make it a tradition: Line up everyone's freshly washed "equipment" for a family tractor show when you're finished and, if you want to go the extra mile, award prizes like Best Spit Shine, Squeaky Clean Tires, and Most Likely to Be Muddy Again Tomorrow.

Shine and Show Favorites: SwiftJet foam sprayer for hose, Kids’ ScrubIt car wash kit

4. Have a Harvest Baking Day

There will come a moment (okay, several) when farmer, farmhand, or Little Helpers hit a wall: blood sugar dipping and exhaustion setting in long before the day is done. 

Prepare accordingly.

Preferably with carbs and sugar. 

Set aside some time to bake everyone's favorites: cookies, muffins, rolls, energy balls, granola bars, or anything else that freezes well.

Let the kids help scoop ingredients and lick the beater.

Then freeze everything in grab-and-go portions. 

Stash a treat bag or two for yourself.

Make it a tradition: Choose one recipe that you make only during harvest. Over time, that one baked good becomes synonymous with the season.

Bake Day Favorites: Small bakery bags, Individual cookie or bar boxes

5. Have a Make-Ahead Field Meal Day

Since you've already destroyed the kitchen baking, you might as well keep going!

Choose several meals that freeze and reheat well and make double or triple batches before harvest begins.

Think grab-on-the-go and easy-to-eat one-handed: hot sandwiches, burritos and wraps, baked potatoes, pastas, and casseroles… basically anything that can go from freezer to farmer without a million prep steps or too much sloppiness.

Anything you’ll be able to throw in a crockpot when you’re out of steam is ideal. 

Stock disposable containers, napkins, and cutlery so you're not spending November wondering where every glass food-storage container you own disappeared to (spoiler: probably the shed fridge - in which case you won’t want them back).

Make it a tradition: Have everyone choose a favorite "harvest dinner" that gets added to the menu.

Field Meal Favorites: Disposable take-out containers, Foil casserole pans, Crock Pot, Crock Pot Disposable Liners, Crock Pot Cozy Carrier, Disposable Cutlery

6. Make Grab-bags for the Tractors

Instead of running things out to the field one item at a time, put together a little harvest survival grab-bag for each cab.

Include tissues, hand wipes, notepads, pens, chargers, gum, hand sanitizer, pain relievers, and whatever else your crew inevitably asks someone to bring them.

Add some small size trash bags too.

Because empty Gatorade bottles and discarded snack wrappers seem to thrive: multiplying quickly in the tractor cab ecosystem. 

Make it a tradition: Have the kids decorate a note or picture for each basket before it goes into the tractor.

Grab-bag Go-to’s: Vehicle organizer caddy, Solar power bank, Extra long charging cables, Easy-on phone mount, Magsafe phone holder

7. Take an Annual "Harvest Family" Photo

You’re probably already taking as many pictures during harvest as you can.

Now designate a moment before the chaos begins to get one with everyone included. 

Put the kids beside the combine or each generation around grandparents or that Original Tractor. Get Mom in the photo for once. Prop the baby safely in somebody's arms. Include the dog… the barn cat… that one pampered hen. 

It doesn't need coordinated outfits or professional photography.

Romanticized pictures are nice, but in this case the muddy boots, oil-stained jeans, worn flannel, and seed sales hats are better. Record the reality you want to remember. 

Make it a tradition: Take approximately the same picture in the same place every year.

The farm, crops, and equipment may or may not change from year to year.

But watching those little boots get bigger every harvest?

That's the part you'll want to keep.

8. Make a Harvest Headquarters for the Kids

Farm kids want to be where the action is.

Unfortunately, the action frequently involves a lot of large, dangerous machinery.

So before harvest starts, establish a designated place for kids to play away from moving equipment. Separate with baby gates, a toddler corral, or visual cues like temporary tape. Once you’ve got your safe spot out of the line of traffic stock it with the usual favorites: sidewalk chalk, toy tractors, bubbles, an outdoor play table, books, etc. 

Toys that can do double-duty for long cab rides are great: think suction-cup spinners, pop-its, handheld puzzle toys, or reusable coloring books, etc. A favorite around our farm is a realistic set of children’s tools: the kids love having little screwdrivers and wrenches ready in pockets for when “things need fixing” just like big farmers do. 

Then explain the harvest rules—even if they've heard them a million times before.

Where can they play?

Where can they never go?

Which adults can they ride along with?

What do they do when a tractor starts?

Farm safety isn't the most charming harvest tradition, but getting everyone safely through the season is the ultimate positive outcome.

Make it a tradition: Let the kids help "open" their Harvest Headquarters every year by choosing a few special activities or toys that only come out during harvest.

Keep Them Entertained: Plant & Grow Tractor Book, Construction coloring book, Extra large crayola crayons, Toddler tool set, Little Tykes ride-on tractor, Suction-cup spinners for car window, John Deere micro tractor set, Pop n’ Go playpen

9. Name a Harvest Season Scapegoat

It’s inevitable. 

Things will go wrong. Mistakes will be made. Weather will do it’s thing. Anxieties may wax and wane and tempers may even flare from time to time. 

In an endeavor when so much is out of our immediate control, any measures we can take to manage emotions and expectations, keeping things healthy and in perspective, is a plus. 

Enter: the Harvest Season Scapegoat. This entity can be real (we’ve seen them in the form of a stuffed animals, scarecrows, even a hat on an old coffee can) or imaginary. The key is to give life and personality to a fictional person everyone is allowed to blame when things go wrong. 

Give it a funny name, like Goober, Peanut, or Old Willy. Something that immediately turns anger into a good chuckle. Make it a schtick. Get the kids in on it. 

Combine breakdown at 11pm? Old Willy’s fault. 

Overloaded wagon? That darn Willy! 

Chickens got out and pecking right where you need to pull in to dry? Old Willy let them loose. 

Soon, your family have a shared history of laughs and “Willy Did It” stories, instead of cross words and frustration. 

Make it a tradition: Maintaining the same Scapegoat from year-to-year, making up imaginary scenarios, and diverting blame from one another helps decrease tensions and increase shared history and inside jokes. 

10. Have an End-of-Harvest Dinner

Once the dust settles and the tractors are cleaned (again) and put away, sit down for a meal together.

Nothing fancy. 

Just everyone gathered together in one place (finally). Put phones away. Say a prayer or give thanks for a safe and successful season. Talk about what everyone’s experience

And acknowledge what harvest actually represents: another year of hard work coming to a close. 

There were good rains and bad rains. Plans changed. Things broke. Things grew.

And now the hard work is over.

Tomorrow everyone can start worrying about yields, markets, and repairs.

Tonight, just be grateful you made it.

Make it a tradition: Have everyone share their funniest moment or favorite harvest memory from this season. 

The Best Harvest Traditions Are the Easy Ones

Relax, you don't need to manufacture a picture-perfect harvest for your family.

The season already involves enough work.

The best traditions are the ones that fit naturally around what you're doing already: washing tractors, filling the freezer, stocking snacks, eating together, taking a picture, letting little kids feel like they're part of something important.

Because they are.

They may not remember the yield from a particular field or exactly how late everyone stayed out finishing corn. But they will remember washing their tiny tractor beside Dad's big one. They'll remember carrying cookies to the field.

They'll remember the annual bonfire with s’mores, and riding along to deliver warm foil-packed dinners. And they'll remember that when the leaves started turning and the combine rolled out, something special was about to begin.

That's worth celebrating.

Click this link for a complete shoppable list of our favorite tried-and-tested Harvest Season gear
or browse individual items below.

Disclaimer: This post is based on personal experience and preference, for information and entertainment purposes only. It is not meant to serve as safety advice or instructions, and contains affiliate links. Please visit our Disclosures page for additional information.

Keywords: harvest season, harvest season traditions, harvest traditions, farm family traditions, farm family harvest traditions, fall farm traditions, harvest activities, harvest activities for families, harvest activities for kids, farm activities for kids, fall activities for farm kids, farm kids, raising farm kids, farm family life, family farm life, farming with kids, harvest with kids, harvest season with kids, fall on the farm, autumn on the farm, harvest on the farm, corn harvest, fall harvest, Midwest harvest season, Midwest farm life, rural family traditions, country family traditions, country living, rural living, farm life, harvest season ideas, ways to celebrate harvest, how to celebrate harvest season, beginning of harvest season, pre-harvest traditions, harvest preparation, preparing for harvest season, harvest meal ideas, field meals for farmers, harvest meals for farmers, make-ahead harvest meals, harvest snacks, harvest baking ideas, farm family fall activities, tractor activities for kids, farm kids activities, harvest bonfire, harvest family photos, harvest season essentials, harvest season on the family farm