Ray Bilderbackcut
Washington state has become one of the world’s richest agricultural areas, producing vast acreages of wheat, lentils, soybeans, chickpeas, apples, potatoes, dry beans, onions, award-winning wines and frozen foods such as sweet peas, asparagus, and French fries (yes, French fries).
A major crop in eastern Washington is wheat. The USDA National Agricultural Statistic Service reported that in 2017, Lincoln County had 367,786 acres in wheat. Adjoining Adams County had 273,973 acres in wheat.
Wheat was found in Egyptian pyramids but was a human food long before that. For centuries, wheat harvesting was done with a hand sickle, then bundled up and taken to a threshing floor. There, it was stomped on or flailed until the wheat was separated from the chaff. It was a lengthy process and a bushel of grain was hard-won.
Settlers in eastern Washington at the turn of the 20th century cut the wheat, bundled it into shocks, transported the shocks to a stationary thresher where the wheat was separated from the chaff and then sewed into sacks. Harvesting wheat was still labor intensive, but yields were up and so was the amount acreage a family could manage.
Gradually, farm families acquired the modern combine that cut the wheat, threshed it and stored it in a hopper where, by means of its own conveyor system, it could be off-loaded to a truck.
Marvelous; it cut harvest times and cut labor costs as well. That became very important when World War II labor shortages occurred. At that time, the average farm was less than 2,000 acres (keep in mind half of that acreage was in summer fallow, set aside to rest each year).
Harvest time has always been accompanied by exhausting days of preparation, and that’s if everything went well. George Smith of Sprague was as ready for the 1973 harvest as anybody else when he died suddenly at home.
George had been a wheat farmer all his life. When he was 13, his father died and just like that he and his brother, Joe T., age 12, had a farm to run (they did so with help from their mother and older sisters).
George’s death left his widow with a terrible problem: if the farm were to pay its bills and its taxes, if she were to have funds enough to live on for the coming year, the crop needed to be harvested in a timely manner. Timely meant before rainfall lodged the wheat and mold got at it, before it got too dry and heads shattered.
You get the picture. The wheat needed to be harvested, but all the local wheat farmers were set to harvest their own crop and for all the same reasons. The problem was discussed at church, at the lodge, and over kitchen coffee in many households. Lloyd Bourne and Art Pelley took on the problem. They would have a harvest bee. It would be a community gathering, much like a barn raising or quilting bee.
Lloyd’s son, Terry, was 14. He took on the task of removing machinery, parts of trucks and this and that of a farm operation from the big shop. Then he scrubbed it down so they could have a massive harvest lunch there.
They chose a Sunday for the event. The combines came lumbering across fields and dusty country roads to the adjoining farm owned and operated by Lloyd and Maureen Bourne (Maureen was George’s niece) where the operation was planned. By mid-afternoon, 19 combines had harvested nearly 1,000 acres of wheat, securing a payday for George’s widow. Like many wheat families, it would be her only check that year. Imagine the planning that took.
Along with the combines, there were 19 wheat trucks and we kept the little country elevator quite busy. Some observers said the combines looked like bees in a hive, some said they were like a herd of coordinated elephants prowling the hillsides.
Back at the shop, some volunteers washed truck windows, filled radiators, checked tire pressures – anything to be a part of it.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, people would need lunch. Maureen, with help from many hands, organized the lunch. Tables and chairs, loaned by the school in Sprague, were set up in Terry’s clean shop and ladies from nearby farms brought their favorite casseroles and desserts. There were hot roast beef sandwiches, baked beans, mac and cheese and salads galore.
All were welcome and some people came just because they didn’t want to miss out. It was that kind of thing; I got to drive one of the trucks and have felt all these years how lucky I was to be included.
Ray Bilderback, creator of the Reuben Braddock novels, was born and raised in the Sierra foothills of California. He served in the U.S. Navy Seabees during the Korean War and taught for many years in the west. He makes his home in the mountains of eastern Washington with his archeologist wife, Madilane Perry. “In the 1930s and 1940s, where I lived, we still used horses and hand tools, canned and preserved what we grew or raised, lit our kerosene lanterns, stoked our woodstoves. In my writing, I draw from those times like water from a sweet well.”