I'm not sure my husband knew he would turn in to Farmer Jay one week a year when he asked me to marry him, but the last two years that is exactly what's been happening! Last year he went to Montana without me for a week to help dad with harvest, and when he came back we both decided that it was a terrible to be separated for a whole week and that I would go with him the next year.
We just got back from spending a whole week in Montana. I'm so thankful that Jason is so willing to take time off from his own job to go help my dad with harvest. Jason bounced around in old trucks unloading wheat from trucks to bins and I got to spend time with mom and time with dad in the combine. I don't think I've ever had much time alone with mom so it was fun to go on walks in the mornings with her and to make lunches and dinner for the men with her and to take them out to the field. I also got to spend some time with her at the Dinosaur Museum she volunteers at every week. (FYI it's pretty sweet. Check out the link here http://www.creationtruth.org/ )
It's hard to capture everything that goes along with harvest. How EVERYONE back home are farmers and are all doing the same work. (There are never coversation starters of "so what do you do for a living?" out there). How all the men are getting antsy and nervous as they keep one eye on the wheat to watch for when it's ripe enough to cut and the other eye on the sky praying and hoping for the weather to cooperate. They are also all watching each other and are secretly keeping tally of who is almost done with harvest, who isn't, and who hired custom combiners. It's also a tragedy to have a combine sit still when it could be moving so the wives jump in to keep it going while the men take a short break to eat the delicious supper that is laid out on the tail gate of a pickup. Occasionally, harvest also can bring the heartache of watching dark clouds come and to sit helplessly by as hail stones ruin the crops that were supposed to help the famer and his family make it another year.
Overall it was a great trip! Farmer Jay was pretty worn out by the end of our trip, but he has already talked about the next time we go out for harvest :) I'm also excited for next year as well!
Here are a few pictures from the trip. I only took pictures of the sky, and you'll see why :) I had to steal a few pictures from mom to have any pictures with people in it.