Wheat People

On the Run

Combines cut wide swaths through the Ott fields, Mulvane, 1998.

After weeks of harvest preparations, the tension in a farming community is palpable. Eventually, one or two nervous farmers begin harvesting even though the wheat is still a little too green. Then the sun gets hotter and the grain gets riper, and suddenly everyone is cutting wheat. Kansas roads quickly fill with trucks carrying wheat to market.

It's an annual spectacle signaling harvest is underway.

As combines lumber through the fields, their holding bins fill with wheat and must be emptied. Grain trucks receive the wheat and haul it to local elevators or farm storage bins.

Usually waiting near the road, trucks are the harvest newsroom. Neighbors and friends pull over to get updates from the driver, and there's always a water jug inside and the truck's breezy shade outside.

"I like the big trucks." Louanne Short, Assaria, 1998
	Many women took a more active role on their farms beginning in World War II because of a labor shortage. From 1941 to 1942, the number of Kansas women operating field machinery more than tripled.
Lee Cox, Anthony, 1998.

Women continued to operate equipment after the war, particularly during harvest. Most of today's combine operators are men, but women truck drivers are a common sight on Kansas roads.

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