Our town can be accurately described as a small green oases in a sea of wheat. Wheat for hundreds of miles and little else because this is dry land farming. And the moisture that does fall here will only support the wheat. If you let the land revert back to it's natural state its nothing but scrub grass and sagebrush. Not very pretty. Most people never realize a large part of Washington state is desert. But through farming the land of eastern Washington in some of the most productive in the world. We produce winter wheat by the ton here because there is no irrigation available as it is in the Columbia Basin. In other parts of the dry desert like eastern Washington all manner of produce, vineyards, and orchards abound because of the widespread irrigation available from the Snake, Yakima, and Columbia rivers.
Right now is harvest season so everyone (even those who are not farmers) are keeping an eye on what.s going on. All of us depend on our farmers to keep thriving. This harvest has been the latest on record due to a cold wet spring and cool summer. But soon all the wheat will be in and the farmers can breath a sigh of relief.
Half harvested wheat
A combine hard at work
Huge wheat pyramids outside of town
It makes our town dust though. All the combines working from dawn till dusk turns up huge amounts of dust. So I have to clean even more often and allergies are running high. A small price to pay for such bounty.
This is an arable farming area too, but our loandscape is nothing like yours and the fields are tiny by comparison. Sometimes it's hard to appreciate the scale of a place compared to your own experience.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the photos. Very interesting....