The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG - Despite losing four combines to accidental fires in the past week, despite dealing with lodged grain and some rust, and despite the prospect of losing some hired help from students and teachers going back to school soon, grain growers in the Touchet Valley aren't complaining about this year's harvest.

"This is one of the best crops we've had in recent memory," said Guy McCaw of 4MC, one of the area's largest growing operations in the area stretching over 70 miles and 18,000 acres from Touchet to Waitsburg.

Conducting an interview with the Times over the radio from his combine in the fields above Waitsburg Tuesday, McCaw said 4MC is about two weeks behind a normal cutting schedule because of the cool wet spring that has slowed and delayed the growing season this year.

But the gradual maturation and absence of temperatures in the low 100s that can "cook" the grain have helped boost yields to levels well above average, McCaw and other growers in the Touchet Valley said.

"This year will top the last three," agronomist Matt Weber of the MacGregor Co. in Waitsburg said about his clients' harvests. "The crops are meeting or exceeding a large majority of expectations."

With several weeks of harvest to go, average yields range from 90 to more than 110 bushels per acre, Weber said. Rainfall, which is normally around 16 inches per year was well over 20 inches this year. The last time rainfall was as high as this year was in 1996.

"The rains were spread out during the crucial growing season," Weber said. "We just had some really good growing conditions."

Four local growers lost combines to fires ignited by hot engines igniting straw and grain dust, and catching the machines, whose price tag can reach $250,000 per unit, on fire.

Farmers helped each other out by sharing the use of the giant cutting machines, but because everybody is keeping up with an intense harvest schedule, the loss still crimped production for some growers, Weber said.

That collaboration and the team work on the cutting crews is vital for a successful harvest, said McCaw, whose team consists of 16 workers bringing in the crop using a carefully planned and coordinated agricultural operation.

In the case of 4MC, the harvest lasts more than six weeks. Backout driver Tony Henderson of Dayton is among the seasonal hires who will miss the last two weeks of cutting.

Henderson, a Spanish and physical education teacher at Dayton High School, goes back into the classroom next week. Others leaving the fields for their schools soon include high school and college students.

On Tuesday, McCaw and his men lined up their combines in formation for some pictures in the Times. For the first time this year, the machines are flying the Stars & Stripes out of "pure patriotism," McCaw said.

"We wanted to do it in previous years, but we couldn't find the right flags," he said. "Then, we saw them at Home Depot this year and got them. Go USA."

Local residents seeing the combines displaying their Red, White and Blue colors in the field responded with honks, waves and cheers as they drove by.

Charlie Hatfield, a combine driver for Perry and Darlene Dozier's Double D Ranch, makes his way through a stand in the hills above Smith Springs Road on Sunday.

The heavy grain caused the wheat plants in some fields to fall over, creating crushed spotting on many hills in the area. The combines have to slow down signifi cantly to cut the flattened or "lodged" grain, putting the brakes on harvesting operations.

"It comes to a grinding halt," one driver said.

In some field, this pock marking has affected up to 30 percent of the wheat, Weber said .

A number of growers are expected to be done with harvest before the end of August, while others, particularly in the Dayton area, may need to cut well into September.

But wor ld commodity prices for wheat and the above-average yields make up for the extra resources it took to spray for rust, deal with lodged plants and wrap up cutting later than usual.

"The Good Lord has probably done as good as He could ever do," veteran farmer Jack McCaw of 4MC said.