The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG - While amber waves of grain may be a nice song lyric, they are often not the nicest object to stare at for an entire 13-hour workday. Veteran harvest employee Zach Beas- ley is more than familiar with endless fields of wheat.

This summer, Beasley will be working his fifth harvest season for Waitsburg wheat farmer Rusty Lyons. Beasley, a senior mechani- cal engineering student at Washington State University, said while the wheat can get monotonous, he enjoys the crew members he works with and the money he makes working for Lyons helps put him through college.

He started the job in...