Every year dozens of farming families pack their bags, stock their RVs, load their trucks and head south to Texas for an annual pilgrimage that involves hard work, hot weather, and occasionally a rewarding sunset. These are the custom harvesters who harvest the wheat that grows in abundance throughout the western United States.
The annual wheat harvest usually begins in May and can last as long as six or seven months and takes these hard-working Americans from the depths of Texas to the high mountain plains of northern Montana.
Many of these harvesting crews are made up of farming families who’ve been making this annual journey for most of their lives. It’s a life-style few can imagine, and even fewer actually do it. Living in a travel trailer for months at a time, working long hours-many times with no days off-would be a challenge to even the toughest of people. But these folks love it. They wouldn’t think of doing anything else, because they know that what they are doing is a vital link in feeding the world.
It’s because of their hard work, the rest of us can have bread to eat, pasta to cook, and pastries to enjoy. The work of their hands literally goes around the world.