Harvesting in the Heat

By Sara Desautel

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Summary

Eastern Oregon wheat farmers' life work relies on these hot conditions.

Story Published: Jul 5, 2007 at 5:26 PM PST

ECHO--It may seem like torture, but many Eastern Oregon started harvesting Thursday.

Wheat farmer Tim Hawkins said, "So far it's starting off with a nice hot day."

Nice. Even with triple-digit temperatures.

Hawkins says these are actually ideal conditions for wheat harvesting.

Hawkins said, "This is good conditions, it's just hard on the people. Especially people that aren't sitting in an air conditioned cab. For those of us out working on the machinery, it's hot, but it's harvest time, so it's going to be hot."

After all, they don't get to pick when to start harvesting.

Hawkins said, "We start to harvest when the wheat gets ready to harvest and Mother Nature dictates that. For us, it's usually somewhere around the fourth of July."

Working in the fields this time of year brings with it the fear of fire.

Hawkins said, "Someone always has a fire. When you've got dry tinder box conditions. Wheat is very flammable this time of year. You've got a lot of machinery around, you're going to have some threat of fire."

Farmers try to be careful to keep their field from flames.

A burning field is like setting money on fire.

Hawkins says a rainfall last month saved the crops, but they've had their share of problems.

Hawkins said, "We had some winter damage and then we had some real hot weather in about the first part of June, end of May. That was very damaging to the wheat. So I would say, overall, probably not going to be one of our better crops."

Fortunately for Hawkins and others like him, the price of wheat is up.

So he hopes his crops will still provide a decent return.

When we say the price of wheat is up, we're talking about six dollars a bushel.

That's only happened twice before in all of history.

Typically, wheat prices go for about four dollars a bushel.

Even though the cost of wheat is up, don't expect to notice much of a difference the next time you buy a loaf of bread.

An increase of one dollar a bushel for wheat ends up only costing you about two cents more for bread.