A thank you for harvest images

To the editor,

Thank you for the images; they are a real treat, and a trip down what is now a 60-year memory lane.

Working in harvest, whether green peas or later grain, never seemed like work. It was an experience that most of the area participated in, and they were glad to.

The photojournalism ties well to another story, the railroad. In my opinion, the natural owner of the railroad should be the Northwest Grain Growers. Not for any partisan or political reason, but for the back to the future reason.

The enormous harvest equipment feeds a truck fleet, which has steadily grown to combination weights in excess of 60 tons. These trucks will destroy the County Road system, first the surface, then the bridges, then the fills, and the roadbed itself. None of the post-WWII systems were designed for rubber tired freight of this weight. For some farmers, in some areas, with some ingenuity a bank out wagon could load directly to a standard hopper car if the Northwest Grain Growers ran the railroad. One to three loads per car, simply an amazing amount of grain.

And, paradoxically, thanks to the loss provision in the property tax code, there is no money to replace these systems. It would appear that grain growing areas, in their desperate attempt to stay in business, are removing the transportation systems that allow them to be in business at all.

Again, thanks for the images. Here are a couple images of equipment I have driven by for over sixty years. Silent witnesses to changes in dryland grain farming.

Curtis Leslie

Washington