In 1943, workers harvested some 15,500 tons of cabbage in Bellevue and Bothell and in the White River and Sammamish Valleys. This wartime record exceeded the 1942 crop by 50%. Sauerkraut factories canned most of the crop, and the rest was dried into flakes for military meals or sold fresh to homemakers. That year, fresh cabbage was not rationed. This meant that people could save their precious ration points to buy other, more limited, foods.

This photo was taken during the 1943 cabbage harvest on Ivan Unbedacht's cabbage farm near Kent, Washington. Little Sonny Hauck investigates a cabbage which is almost as big as he is, while an unidentified woman sits nearby. Many of the wartime farmworkers were volunteers.

Written on sleeve: Cabbages, Kent Valley
Date photograph was filed at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (date of photograph and file date may differ by a month or more): October 25, 1943