Fixings for a Feast
Sacred Heart Monastery
Yankton, SD
The Benedictine Sisters at Sacred Heart Monastery in Yankton, South Dakota have always been bread bakers. To accommodate the bread baked for the monastery and even for the college at different points in time, they required a large (a very large) oven. This oven was built in 1923, and sisters still bake 50-70 loaves of bread in it every few weeks. When Thanksgiving comes around, this oven has been used not only for baking bread, but also for cooking turkeys. The sisters bake 30 turkeys in the oven, which will contribute to the Monastery’s Thanksgiving dinner but also to a Thanksgiving meal in Yankton for about 1800 or more people. The hospital and grocery store cook many turkeys as well. The meal feeds those in need or provides a social outing for anyone looking to not be alone on the holiday. Others make the potatoes and sides and bake pies. About 50 people help serve in a large church that was once a large grocery store, and another 100-220 meals are delivered to individuals who are homebound. The only time there was no Thanksgiving feast was during 2020 and 2021 during the covid pandemic.
The Thanksgiving feast was highlighted in the Yankton Daily Press and Dakotan.
