2009 Winter Wheat

 We’ve been hearing rumblings from over in Montana that the winter wheat crop is just beginning, and the grain is plentiful. The Billings Gazette carried an article about wheat and it went like this: The trundling tines of Larry Staley's combine combed through a freakishly thick mane of winter wheat the other day. Pressed tightly together, the bearded heads eclipsed the field bed like a golden river at spring runoff. What??? Is this poetry or farming. The article continues… “From Billings heading east, combines are making their first cuts in the 2009 winter wheat crop. The grain seems plentiful.”

 Well I got downright envious about all of Montana’s fist pumping, back-slapping and high-fiving so I went to Blaine Jacobson, Executive Director of the Idaho Wheat Commission, and asked him how we were doing here: “Winter wheat throughout the country is good and here in Idaho it’s excellent. This year we had plenty of water, and we didn’t have any major heat snaps, and no major diseases. So the winter wheat crop in Idaho is looking terrific. Particularly over in the dry farm areas of Eastern Idaho.”