Wheat Harvest

Having grown up in a small farming town in Oregon, the middle of July means harvest time to me. Wheat harvest has always been a communal affair in my family. As soon as I turned 13, I was in the fields driving one of the trucks alongside the combines, keeping my pace steady while bushels of wheat poured into the truck bed. I was a conscientious driver, always careful not to spill a kernel. It is still said that I was the best truck driver that ever worked in our fields (no kidding!). My father and my uncle ran the combines and my aunt drove one of the other trucks. When my younger brother, sister and cousins were old enough, they too were put to work during harvest time.

Although the hours were long and the air hot and dusty, driving a wheat truck was a wonderful job for a kid. In between hauling loads to the town elevator and waiting for the combines to fill, I’d read stacks of books and magazines, listen to music, and eat and drink goodies that I’d pack in a cooler for myself every morning. I loved the smell of freshly cut straw and the way the “amber waves of grain” rippled like water when the wind passed over the gentle sloping fields. It was exciting to be part of the crew, helping to reap those acres upon acres, always with an edge of hurriedness, hoping to get the last bushel safely into the bins before inclement weather set in.

Above are a couple of photos from back in those days…that’s my brother standing next to the red truck, and me on the left in the other picture, posing with my aunt amidst our entourage of trucks, greased up and ready to begin the first day of harvest. To this day, my brother takes time off from his engineering job to come back and help, and my sister and aunt still drive the trucks, although the machinery has changed since the Ford F-750’s. Now they’re driving gigantic 10-wheelers with so many gears, it would take some reorientation if I was put behind the wheel. It’s pretty amazing to think that alone, those trucks weigh close to 30,000 lbs, and with a load, (including a “pup” trailer hauled behind), they can sometimes top the scales at 100,000 lbs…that’s some serious weight moving down the road.

One of my strongest memories of working during harvest was the year my uncle decided to move the exhaust pipes on the trucks from either side of the hood above the radiator grill where they were a safe distance from the straw, down to the front bumper. His reasoning was that it would make for a quieter ride. The exhaust pipes were quite loud and it did grate on your nerves after a while, having that booming, rumbling sound blasting in your ears all day long.

The wheat happened to be especially tall that summer and the stubble left by the combine swaths came partway up the door of my truck. On the first day, I didn’t realize it, but as I was driving across the field, any loose straw on top of the stubble began to accumulate on my bumper in and around those searing hot exhaust pipes. As I was pulling out of the field onto the dirt road to take my load of wheat into town, I looked into the rearview mirror and saw a cloud of black smoke and flames shooting up towards the sky. Apparently, a clump of straw on my bumper had caught fire from touching the exhaust pipes and fell off my truck into the wheat. The thought crossed my mind that the fire could have started underneath the carriage of my truck while I was sitting in the field, lighting my engine on fire and exploding my gas tank. Shuddering, I stopped the truck in its tracks, jumped down from the floorboards and grabbed the fire extinguisher mounted on the truck bed and started running towards the flames.

Even though it was a ridiculous idea, I thought I could stop that monstrous fire from destroying my father’s field. By the time I got closer, the fire had spread across two or three acres. I was just about to start spraying the flames with my tiny extinguisher when I heard the blaring of a horn. I looked behind to see my father in his combine coming towards me at top speed from the other direction. I could see him waving his arms through the tinted glassed-in cab. When he caught up with me, he sprung out of the cab and yelled, “Get out of the field! The wind could shift any minute and you’ll be swallowed up!” One hundred and fifty acres burned that day before our crew and the neighboring farmers with their water trucks could put it out. We stopped harvest for a few days so my father and my uncle could move all of the exhaust pipes on the trucks back to their original positions. Luckily, it was the only fire we’ve ever had in the history of our farm.

I thought to call my Dad on his cell phone yesterday to see how harvest was going this year, wishing I was there. I caught him driving in his pick-up on the way to the field. Because of a sprinkling of rain the night before, the crew was getting a late start. An excess of moisture can cause the wheat to be too tough to cut and it’s a waiting game until the sun has a chance to dry the heads out. My Dad was in a great mood, having pulled off the road to talk to me for a minute, as he described the crops that spread out around him under a perfect blue sky. When I asked him what he was averaging so far, he reported that this year was going to produce the highest yields they’ve ever seen (a bumper crop, in fact), averaging 90-95 bushels per acre. And, they haven’t harvested their best field yet, so the average could go even higher. He went on to say that the entire Northwest was recording the highest yields in the country. It doesn’t hurt either, that the market price is up to $6.00 per bushel versus last year’s price at $3.25, the increase due to a shortage of wheat in the world. Unfortunately for the Midwest, (including Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Texas), their numbers are way down. Everyone in my Dad’s neck of the woods, however, has a big wide smile on their face. A bountiful harvest makes for a very happy farmer, indeed.