In wheat country in the Columbia River basin, they gathered to celebrate dryland farming

[depakid]

Dryland winter wheat, grown without irrigation, has been a dependable crop in the Columbia River basin since 1878.
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The rolling hills of the Columbia Basin, the expanse just east of the Cascade Range, must have looked all right to the homesteaders who arrived in the 1870s. The lush land along the rivers and in the Willamette Valley was snapped up decades earlier by Oregon Trail pioneers, but here was wide open.

The lack of trees should have been a clue. In return for passage, the Cascades force clouds sailing in from the Pacific Ocean to dump their moisture on the west side. The new farmers would have to get by with nine to 12 inches of rain a year, less than a third of the rainfall enjoyed by their cohorts in the valley.

That fact has shaped life ever since in Sherman, Gilliam and Morrow counties, part of Wasco County and in Klickitat County across the Columbia in Washington. Farming out here is largely done dryland style, without irrigation.

They've tried about everything but there's still just one crop and one method that thrives in the basin: winter wheat on summer fallow. They plant wheat in the fall and leave it to tough it out during the winter months, when the scant rain or snow falls. That's the moisture it draws on all spring and summer, until harvest in July. The fields harvested each summer are left bare, or fallow, the next season. The rotational break allows the fields to store extra water for when it's their turn again, and results in a patchwork landscape, vast acres of alternating brown and bright green.

It works because wheat is a "tough and very forgiving crop" and a most efficient water user, says Bill Schillinger, who's written about it for Washington State University's dryland research station across the river.

Despite the lack of water, the sparsely populated basin produces 60 percent of the Pacific Northwest's wheat crop. Almost all of it is soft white wheat, exported to Japan and elsewhere in Asia and made into noodles, cookies and crackers. For all Portland's sophistication and romance with high-tech, wheat is the leading product shipped out of the city's port. Sherman County alone, with 1,700 people, grew 4.8 million bushels of wheat last year -- a bushel is about 60 pounds of wheat, enough to fill a five-gallon bucket.

But it's a style of farming that requires tenacity, optimism and perspective from those who practice it, like the six generations of Thompsons who have raised wheat just outside of Moro for the past 130 years.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/06/in_wheat_country_in_the_columb.html

[jtuck004]

1. Years ago when I was hitchhiking and traveling around the counry. I stayed for

a time in Portland (70's). One of the part-time jobs I got was climbing up on railroad cars and shoving a long, brass rod down into the wheat, opening the ports with a handle, and pulling out a sample that we bagged and took to an office to check for the moisture content.

Those were some good times back then...but the country has sure changed.