From Los Angeles to Idaho: Experiencing Harvest
By the time I stepped off the plane in Spokane, Washington, I felt like I had crossed into an entirely different world. Just hours earlier, I was shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers in the chaos of LAX: being confused on where we needed to go, navigating terminals like a maze, and riding trams that felt more like sardine cans than transportation. My dad and I had been swallowed by the noise, the pace, the sheer scale of it all.
Spokane's airport, by contrast, felt like a whisper to what Los Angeles was. One terminal. One runway. One breath of fresh air. As our plane descended, I looked out the window and saw the Palouse for the first time, rolling hills stitched with wheat, chickpeas, and lentils, bordered by forests that seemed to breathe. The land looked like a patchwork quilt laid out by generations of farmers, each square a testament to labor and legacy.
We drove from Spokane, Washington, through Moscow, Idaho, and out toward the farm we were scheduled to tour. We traveled across highways and backroads to get there. Kendrick's house was sitting on top of a hill, surrounded by golden fields. Farm kittens that were almost full grown darted between the porch steps, and Bernie, the Australian shepherd, greeted us like we were old friends. That evening, we shared dinner with Kendrick’s family as the sun melted into the horizon behind the dining room window. The conversation was easy and the food was hearty, homemade, and delicious. It was a world away from Southern California suburbia, slower, more intentional, and deeply rooted in family and land.
The day before harvest we drove through fields to find the best angles for photography purposes and where harvesting was taking place tomorrow. As the sun dipped low, the sky was filled with pink and purple cumulus clouds, and the sun was shining on the grain before it dipped below the horizon. The wind whispered through the stalks, and for the first time in a long time, it was absolutely quiet. It was a kind of quiet you never hear back home in California and the loudest sound was your own breath.
The day of harvest began early, but it was delayed because of the rainstorms from the previous night. We met Kendrick and Hayden in the fields, where the combine and receiving truck pulled by a tractor performed a synchronized ballet, guided by radio chatter. I’d never seen a combine in person before. I’ve surprisingly only seen them in agriculture textbooks and movies. The grain was slowly but surely harvested, acre by acre. Once the receiving truck was full of wheat berries, it would quickly unload into the semi before returning for more. The scale of the harvest was staggering. What looked like a modest field from the road yielded hundreds of thousands of pounds of wheat.
The town of Kendrick is just below the grain fields, a small town of 300 people down the canyon. We drove multiple trips in the semi truck filled with grain down the mountain road to the town of Kendrick’s grain elevator. We only could ride at 20 miles per hour maximum speed. When we pulled into the grain elevator’s receiving zone, Hayden got out and observed the grain unloading– grain falling from the truck’s belly into the grated floor below to receive the grain. Each trip ended with a receipt of how many pounds was accepted and the purchasing price per pound breakdown. Hayden completed this trip three to five times that day in July.
Later, I got to sit in a combine for the first time with Tim, the owner of the land. It was so high off the ground, but once I got inside, it was impressively high tech with air conditioning, cushioned seats, and a surprisingly quiet atmosphere inside. I saw from a different perspective the workings of a combine: the wheat being sliced by blades and pulled in through side conveyors, sorted, shifted, and separated from the chaff. The berries are collected, and the rest discarded to the ground below. The combine was an impressive piece of technology, a marvel of modern agriculture, that successfully sorted thousands of pounds of grain easily and quickly.
When the day was coming to a close and the sun started to set, the grain fields were illuminated by the sun’s last light in contrast to the dark stormy sky in the backdrop. The combine’s headlights cut through the dusk, and you could see the grain dust in the air. I also saw a barn in the distance sitting on top of a hill that was the perfect photo opportunity with the combine in the front. We ended the day back at Kendrick’s house, where cake and conversation awaited. Bernie rode on the truck bed back to the house. Bernie knew the ropes with harvesting days, climbing into the combine like a seasoned pro, comfortable with harvesting machinery, and just happy to be included. On the drive back to Kendrick’s house in the dusk, Bernie was seen in the side mirror- content to join us and feel the nice evening breeze.
My trip to Southern Idaho Palouse was such a unique experience that I will never forget. It reminded me that food doesn’t just appear on grocery store shelves, it comes from people like Kendrick and Tim, who wake before dawn and work until the stars come out. I encourage everyone interested in where our food comes from to go to the source to experience the harvest and small town living. Anyone reading this who lives in the city and wonders where your food comes from, I wholeheartedly recommend it.