Tale Of Two Harvests

The bottom fell out of my stomach as Bill pulled the com­bine

to a stop and stood from the driver's seat. "Okay, now it's your turn." "Uh," was all I could get out. Bill Blessinger, known around town as "Wild Bill," is a large man, wearing bib overalls on this day. He stood stooping in the cab of the wheat harvester and began edging his way around me, effectively scooting me into the driver's seat. "You'll be fine. It's just like driving a lawn mower," he said. Oh sure, I thought. And then he gave me a Quick Guide to Combines tour of the dashboard gauges, knobs, levers, pedals and probably more - all of which went in and straight out of my panicked mind.

"Alright, let's go," he said, after what seemed an all-too-brief and totally inadequate few seconds of training. I mean, have you ever seen a combine? Of course you have. You live in the Touchet Valley. But I had never seen a combine except in pictures before harvest began this month. They are huge! And the damage I could imagine inflicting while behind the wheel at this moment had me practically paralyzed.

What if I couldn't remem­ber how to stop? What if I ran the header into the dirt? What if I somehow damaged the wheat I was to be harvesting?

When it was obvious that I wasn't going to make the first move, Bill leaned over and gently nudged a lever to my right in a forward direc­tion,

and the great machine beneath me responded by lurching to life. And then, to my surprise, I harvested a long, straight row of winter wheat. It was just as satisfying as I remember it was to mow long, neat strips of grass when I was a kid. Sure there were a lot of dials to watch - watch my speed, keep the needle in the green to show a steady volume of grain mov­ing

into the combine, and don't push too hard on the sensitive levers that move the combine forward and back­ward - but it was exciting! I was driving a combine. What a story to tell my kids.

Back in passenger quar­ters, a small, flat surface to the left of the driver's seat, I spent the rest of last Thurs­day afternoon listening to Bill talk about wheat farm­ing, harvesting and life on the farm. "It's a great lifestyle," he says, as I've heard many farmers tell me over the years. "You get to be your own boss and teach your children important lessons about hard work. Plus, it's what I've always done. So I keep doing it." Bill is a third-generation farmer, much like myself. But while the Blessinger family has its roots in the dusty drylands of Columbia County, my family is from Lewis County - the muddy, wet center of timber country just west of White Pass on the other end of U.S. High­way 12.

We have been grow­ing Christmas trees in the Cascade foothills since my grandfather planted his first noble firin 1949. So, I un­derstand the pressures of an stresses her out. But the thrill of those six weeks of harvest, the time when she gets to throw herself entirely into one big, productive proj­ect - that's her favorite time of the year. Oh, she com­plaints about it every year starting about now all the way until the end of October. Then she revels in it.

I have seen the same satis­fied, determined and focused look in many farmers' eyes here in the Touchet Valley in the past few weeks. Bill himself has that easy, "Hey, I'm harvesting now. You have to leave me be so I can get this done," manner. He works from dawn until dark and keeps all hands on deck with him.

The difference between the harvest I'm used to and the harvest here in the val­ley is the sense of commu­nity I've discovered here. Everyone is harvesting. The other day, I was interviewing Waitsburg Mayor Walt Go­bel and he told me he would be busy the next morning "driving wheat truck." Former Times publisher Loyal Baker tells me he sometimes "has the oppor­tunity to drive wheat truck." And last week, when I in­terviewed fire chiefs around Walla Walla and Columbia counties, I learned that many of them moonlight as fire chiefs while their "day job" is wheat farming.

On the tree farm, harvest was isolating. In all of Lewis County, just a handful of small growers are harvest­ing

in November. Nobody in town gets it when you tell them, expecting them to un­derstand, "It's harvest." Here, it feels as though the whole world is harvesting. And now I've experienced a little of what harvest in the Touchet Valley means. Thanks for the opportunity Bill. Sorry about that patch of wheat up there. Maybe we should just leave the driving to the pros, eh?