Like the rest of us, the Wilhelm family is getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner.

Order 560 pounds of turkey breast? Check.

Get ingredients for 825 pounds of stuffing? Check.

Buy 32 gallons of sauerkraut? Check.

The Wilhelms, whose Friendly Farm Restaurant on Foreston Road, in Upperco, is celebrating its 50th anniversary, expect to feed 1,700 people on Thanksgiving. Reservations to this family-style holiday meal were filled last month. About 600 people signed up the first day reservations were available.

"We start the first seating at 11 that morning, and it's nonstop all day," said Larry Wilhelm, 58, who runs the restaurant with his brother, Gary Wilhelm, 53. "We get groups of whole families and tables of just one or two. There's always a family atmosphere here, but it's even stronger on Thanksgiving."

Ruth and Bob Reinhardt, of Hanover, Pa., say it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without their meal at Friendly Farm.

"We always go there and let our children have Thanksgiving with their in-laws," Ruth Reinhardt said. "It's like a family at Friendly Farm. If you talk to your neighbor at the next table, they'll talk to you. The waitresses are so nice and accommodating. In all the years we've been going there, I can't think of a time when I've seen them upset."

Most of the restaurant's staff of 86 is on hand for turkey day.

"I've only missed one Thanksgiving," said Debbie Asper, of Hampstead, who has been a cook, a cashier and a waitress for 13 years. "It's nice to see the families come. People are in a good mood and it actually smells like Thanksgiving."

Thanksgiving and Mother's Day are the restaurant's two biggest days, said Tom Kelbaugh, the general manager who has worked there for 28 years. Easter is the third busiest day.

The restaurant is open seven days a week, except for about 10 days around Christmas.

Last year, it served 135,000 meals.

That number would have pleased and amazed Larry and Gary's father, Jack Wilhelm, who died in 1979 at age 66. He's the one who started the restaurant.

After Jack and Dorothy Wilhelm bought a 200-acre farm in 1945, Jack started looking for ways to add to his farming income. He bought an old truck to haul coal from Hazelton, Pa., but the truck died after a few trips.

He bought 10,000 chicks, which lived in the barn under heat lamps. The power went out one night and all the chicks died.

Jack, a cook in the Army who had prepared meals for General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, then decided to serve meals to the public. He had a commercial kitchen installed in the family farmhouse and opened Friendly Farm Restaurant in 1959.

"He got this harebrained idea and talked my mother into it," Larry Wilhelm said.

Noting that Interstate 83 hadn't been built back when they opened the restaurant, Larry said, "I don't know who he thought would travel all the way out here, but he started serving on Saturdays and Sundays and people started coming."

Larry said the farmhouse had two 20-seat dining rooms. Meals began at 1 p.m. Customers used the upstairs bathroom; the TV room in the basement was the waiting room. He would often go to his bedroom to find kids playing with his toys.

He recalled standing on a milk crate so he could wash dishes at the kitchen sink.

"There were plenty of Sundays we'd be leaving for church, and people would be in our front yard tossing a ball around. It was a day trip for them to come out to the country," Larry said. "We'd wave to them, go to church and start cooking when we got back."

The Wilhelms built the current facility in 1964. It seats 225 in the dining room and has a banquet facility for 250.

The family-style meals in the early days featured fried chicken and ham. The menu later expanded to include crab cakes, steak, shrimp, roast beef, pork chops, orange roughy and fried oysters. Today, all meals are served with apple butter, cottage cheese, cole slaw, a relish dish, hot rolls, biscuits, french fries, vegetables, fruit, beverages and dessert.

Crab cakes are the biggest seller.

Waitress Kim Tracey, 33, of York, Pa., started working at Friendly Farm when she was 16 and has been there ever since.

"The place has a way of drawing you in and keeping you here," she said.

"We have some customers who come in several times a week. They come because the food is good, but also because they feel like they're part of the family."

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