Wheatfields and Windmills

We moved back to Pendleton during harvest time.  Everyone seems to think of wool when they hear the word Pendleton, but there are hardly any sheep raised out here.  The biggest crop around here by far is wheat.

These are the "amber waves of grain" you've heard tell about.

Jim, my dad-in-law, took me and the boys out to the wheatfields where he has been working harvest for the last few weeks.  Being a certified old guy, he was given the relatively cushy job of driving the trucks that take the grain from the fields to the grain elevators to be stored.  He got to sit in an air-conditioned truck all day, which is pretty fine digs for working harvest!

Solomon sitting in a wheat truck.  If only his legs were a little longer we could send him to work in the fields too.

Jim also brought us out to get a close-up look at one of Eastern Oregon's newer crops: wind farms.  Acres and acres of land have been set up with huge wind turbines that generate electricity.  You can see a lot of them as you drive on Interstate 84 through the eastern half of the Columbia Gorge.  The ones we got to see are not visible from the river, but live up in the breezy hills outside of Pendleton, planted right alongside acres of golden wheat.

These things are impressively tall once you get up close to them.  These particular ones, however, are short in comparison to the newer models they have in the Columbia Gorge.

The boys enjoyed getting a close-up look at the wind turbines, and they even got to take home a souvenir bundle of wheat stalks.

Grandpa Jim cutting some wheat for the boys.

 

 

Yay for wheat!  You can see the base of the windmill there behind Solomon.