12 Sep Brian: Turning the final page

No two harvests are the same, and every year tells a different tale. We start with a clean sheet of paper, writing our harvest as the summer progresses. Just like you, we never know what events will unfold or where the plot will take us.

Some years our harvest novel is a comedy, reflecting on the laughter and camaraderie that inherently come from spending time together on the road. Other chapters are more serious, recounting a challenging weather week or an unexpected breakdown that teaches patience. Keep turning the pages, and you’ll find a tale of romance, recalling our love of the harvest and working with the land.

For the past 100 days, we’ve shared a weekly synopsis of what’s happened in the field, usually making note of the bountiful yields nearly everywhere we’ve been. But all good things must come to an end, and that brings us to the final chapter of this year’s harvest. It’s a chapter of change. As the crew mentally prepare to trade life of the road for our life back on the farm, it’s surprising how hard that transition can be. While we look forward to escaping our tin trailer houses and walking over the welcome mat of our own front porches, something will be missing.

The sun still sets, but no longer behind a golden field of grain. Harvesting 40 feet at a time is replaced with lawn mowing 4 feet at a time. Breakfast is no longer a group activity, and Friday night lights take on a new meaning, illuminating a high school football field instead of a wheat field. Home life and harvest life are two very different things, and sometimes we wish the best parts of both were more easily combined.

A visit to your favorite book store likely won’t include any harvest stories on the bestsellers shelf, but you know a good book when you see one. Few things are as unique or more captivating than stories of harvest, and the All Aboard Wheat Harvest corespondents feel privileged to put pen to paper each week and share them. It’s not a work of fiction, but rather families and friends working with farmers to bring in the food that feeds the world. That’s a feel-good story worthy of a sequel. So grab a bookmark to hold your place, and we’ll pick up the story where we left off next harvest season.