We like to think it's about family.

But when the Pilgrims sat down with the Wampanog Indians for the first Thanksgiving in the autumn of 1621, it wasn't so much about the people as it was the English custom of celebrating the harvest by feasting on the fruits of their labors.

Modern farmers continue that tradition of eating what they grow, raise, freeze, can and otherwise put up during the season. And we benefit from their hard work, too, by enjoying the fresh fruits and vegetables and animals they bring to market.

Here, some area growers share what they will enjoy and appreciate when they gather 'round the table with family and friends on Thursday.

By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, Scott Farabaugh is one tuckered-out third-generation farmer. All 650,000 or so pounds of potatoes he and his father, Girard, and younger brother Steven grow on dad's 400-acre farm in Nicktown, Cambria County, have been dug out of the ground and hauled into underground cold storage (table-stock potatoes are kept just above freezing and chip potatoes, because Gibble's and Herr's like them snow-white, at 55 degrees). So has the organic broccoli, winter squash and cabbage he and his wife, Chrissy, raise on his adjoining 150 acres and sell through the Blue Goose Farm CSA and farmers markets, including Farmers@Farmhouse in the Strip District.

It's a welcome, if brief, respite from the 16-hours workdays he puts in the rest of the year.

"Everything you've grown is sold or stored inside, and you did what you can do for the year," says Mr. Farabaugh, 37.

"We get to relax a bit between hectic times," says his wife.

The potatoes she mashes into creamy submission with a little butter and milk and serves with their Thanksgiving turkey, though, are business as usual. Being spuds farmers, they eat a lot of tubers. Sometimes twice a day.

Says Mr. Farabaugh with a chuckle, "I can count on two hands how often we eat pasta in a year."

The couple and their five children (at least the ones who can eat solids) also will enjoy coleslaw made from grated green cabbage grown on the farm and stored in bins. It's tossed with Miracle Whip, sugar, a little vinegar and grated carrot for color.

This year's growing season was fairly decent, so Mr. Farabaugh and his wife will be especially thankful when they bow their heads in prayer before eating. "We're like the mechanic who babies his car because he knows how hard it is to fix it," he says. "We're constantly aware of what it takes to put what we grow on the table."

That a turkey farmer would roast one of her flock for Thanksgiving dinner is a given. Even after 20-plus years in the business, Bev Pounds of Pounds Turkey Farm in Allegheny Township, northern Westmoreland County, still gets a rumble in the tummy when thinking about this most traditional, and simple, of holiday dishes.

Watching her customers walk away with all those pretty, delicious fresh birds in the weeks leading up to the big day, she notes, is akin to dangling candy in front of a child for weeks before Halloween.

"I honestly can't wait to cook one," says Mrs. Pounds. "I'm exhausted, but I really do look forward to it. "

Not that she gets her pick of the product; with more than 11,000 of the white-feathered hybrid turkeys milling around the coops on the 200-acre farm her father-in-law, Harry, started in 1935, there's no way to keep track of a particular bird. (Hundreds of day-old poults are trucked in from Michigan a dozen times between April and Labor Day.) Even if she could, the farm's counts are usually so close that her husband, Tim, won't pull a bird out of the cooler until the store closes at 7 p.m. on Wednesday. Then it's simply a matter of choosing one from those left that's large enough to feed her gaggle of guests, which this year includes her niece Jody's new husband, Eric, who works at the farm.

"We don't want to take an order we can't fill," says Mrs. Pounds, who prefers a 22-pound hen.

Christmas used to account for half of all Pounds' turkey sales; in recent years, that's fallen to about 20 percent. So November -- they start processing on the 5th -- is a very, very busy month. It helps, then, that daughters Bethany, 22, and Jenna, 19, now are old enough to prepare the corn casserole and stove-top stuffing served as Thanksgiving sides. And that she can grab a few cups of gravy from the 1,200 quarts the farm makes this time of year, along with a big glass bowl of Pounds' famous cranberry sauce. It's a "fun" recipe made with pineapple, marshmallows and walnuts.

"To have a product we can put our name on and be proud of, we're just so thankful," says Mrs. Pounds. "There's an integrity to a local product. People like knowing where their food comes from."

Naturally there'll be pie, and plenty of it. At least one will be filled with a puree of sugar pumpkin grown on site and mixed with milk, brown sugar and cinnamon; another will tempt with tart Northern Spies. But family won't have to wait for dessert to enjoy the apples harvested this fall by Tim and Suzanne Hileman of Kistaco Farm in Apollo.

Thanksgiving Day usually starts with a warm bowl of apple sauce Mrs. Hileman prepares overnight in a slow cooker with just one ingredient: a peck of the farm's Golden Delicious or Jonagold apples. No sugar, no cinnamon, no fuss.

"It's a wonderful breakfast," she says.

Not to mention a healthful tradition.

The Armstrong County farm grows a variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables. But like his grandfather Claude Yerger before him, who purchased the original property in 1922, Mr. Hileman's main crop is apples: some 40 of Kistaco's 235 acres are orchards that produce more than 100,000 bushels of apples.

Whereas in Grandpa's day consumers' main concern was ripeness, today's buyer expects a perfect-looking apple. So the Kitsacos' motto, says Mrs. Hileman, is "Sell the best, and use, can or freeze the rest."

She's not so picky.

Thursday's applesauce and pie will be made with the farm's "pick outs," fruit in which a bad spot or blemish makes it unattractive.

"We just cut that part off."

Mike Reilly was a reluctant second-generation farmer, returning to the 37-acre farm his father, Thomas, purchased in 1941 only after a 20-year career in the military. But he and his wife, Cherie, ended up being pretty good at growing flowers and vegetables.

Since the late 1980s, Reilly's Summer Seat Farm in Ohio Township has been a favorite place in fall to pick squash and pumpkins for eating and decorating; his six-acre Pumpkin Patch offers thousands of Jumping Jacks, Spookies, Baby Bears and Sugar Pie pumpkins.

Pumpkins, of course, take center stage at Thanksgiving dinner. The family meal, which this year will include two of their four children and their spouses and five grandchildren, always starts with a fragrant pumpkin or squash soup and ends with homemade pumpkin pie topped with pralined pecans.

"The pecans really dress it up," says Mrs. Reilly, who several years ago compiled more than two dozen pumpkin recipes from growers across the country into the cookbook/memoir "Pumpkin Patch Proverbs & Pies."

With the hectic harvest pretty much finished -- they sell thousands and thousands of pumpkins during October -- Mr. Reilly is free to pick the best specimens for his table from a stockpile brought into the greenhouse. But the wait, he says, is worth it.

Running a family farm involves long days, both in the field and greenhouse and in the office taking care of bookkeeping. The holiday is a nice break from the madness.

Come December, says Mrs. Reilly, everyone at the farm will be consumed with Christmas shopping; in January, they'll be deciding on inventory, planning the planting schedule and thinking about starting seeds in a basement grow chamber. Relaxing with family over a good meal, says Mrs. Reilly, is "dear."

There's no way Bev Pounds is going to share the recipe for her famous turkey pot pies. "It's proprietary," she says with a laugh. But she's happy to offer one for turkey tetrazzini, one of the classic Thanksgiving leftover dishes.

• 6 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 6 tablespoons flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 cups half and half
• 1 cup turkey stock, or 2/3 cup stock and 1/3 cup cooking sherry
• 3 cups cooked turkey, cut into bite-size pieces
• 8 ounces canned sliced mushroom, or sauteed fresh mushrooms
• 12 ounces cooked spaghetti, rinsed and drained
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

Melt butter in a medium saucepan. Blend in flour, salt and pepper. Add half and half, and stock or stock/sherry. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture comes to a boil. Remove from heat.

Stir in turkey and mushrooms. Toss gently with pasta. Turn into greased 3-quart casserole. Top with cheese. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Serves 8.

-- Bev Pounds, Pounds Turkey Farm

This tasty recipe from Suzanne Hileman of Kistaco Farm in Apollo, Armstrong County, is about as easy as they come. She prefers Golden Delicious, but any variety would work.

• 12 pounds apples, sweet or tart depending on your taste

Peel, core and slice apples. Place in a slow cooker and cook on low overnight. (You don't need to add anything -- no water or sugar or spice -- unless you want to.) In the morning, smash the apples with a potato masher for chunky apple sauce, or whip them with a mixer for smooth apple sauce. Serve warm for breakfast or cooled as a side with dinner.

-- Suzanne Hileman, Kistaco Farm

Why wait until dessert to serve one of fall's most delicious crops, the humble pumpkin? Kick off your Thanksgiving feast with this fragrant pumpkin soup. This is from Lyman Orchards Farm Market in Middlefield, Conn., one of the places in Cherie Brooks Reilly's book, "Pumpkin Patch Proverbs & Pies," that is available at Reilly's Summer Seat Farm ($9.95).

• 1 cup milk
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 cup pure pumpkin
• 11/2 tablespoons melted butter
• 11/2 tablespoons flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Dash white pepper

In a medium saucepan, combine milk, onions and bay leaf. Slowly bring to a boil. Strain, then combine strained ingredients with the chicken both and pure pumpkin. Save milk and set aside.

In a separate saucepan. make a roux by combining the butter with the flour and cooking over low heat for 5 minutes to avoid the floury taste. Slowly add the reserved milk to the roux and whisk until the soup is smooth. Add pumpkin-chicken mixture to the milk mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer over low heat an additional 5 minutes to allow flavors to develop.

Serves 4.

-- "Pumpkin Patch Proverbs & Pies" by Cherie Brooks Reilly

Blue Goose Farm in Nicktown, Cambria County, offers this baked squash dish as an alternative to candied sweet potatoes. Corn flakes provide the crunch.

• 1 medium butternut squash
• 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 6 medium apples, cored and seeded but not peeled
• 11/2 tablespoons shortening
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 box of cornflakes, crushed coarsely, about 3 cups
• 1/2 cup pecans, chopped
• 2 tablespoon butter, melted

Cut squash in half and seed it. Bake upside-down on foil at 300 degrees until tender, about 30 minutes. Scrape out pulp and mash. Season with 1 tablespoon brown sugar and salt and pepper to taste. In the meantime, cook apples with 11/2 tablespoons shortening and 1/4 cup white sugar in small skillet. Cover and simmer until tender.

While apples are simmering, make nutty topping by mixing cornflakes, pecans, butter and remaining 1/2 cup brown sugar.

Spread cooked apples in a baking dish. Spread mashed squash over apples. Sprinkle with nutty topping and bake at 350 degrees until browned, about 15 to 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

-- Kelleigh Farabaugh, Blue Goose Farm

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