Grass seed harvest and a unique sense of satisfaction

Each year, harvest arrives like a freight train: a distant honk, a vibration under our feet, and then it’s on us with a tremendous roar, flying by with noise and intensity, and then it’s gone.

With mild, wet winters and dry summers, precisely suited to growing and harvesting grass seed, the southern Willamette Valley is known as the “grass seed capital of the world,” and supplies the country with orchard grass seed for pastures, annual ryegrass for winter pastures in the south, perennial ryegrass for golf courses and football fields, and fescue for pastures and lawns.

Surely no Grisham novel equals the tension and suspense of farmers watching the weather in March and April as the stalks grow taller and the seed heads form. Are we having too much rain or not enough? What are the seed prices doing? Is the equipment ready for summer?

Then pollen season hits. Yellow clouds hover over the fields, ratcheting this area to the top of every allergy index in the country and bringing joy to every farmer whose year’s labor and investment come down to the spark of life in those tiny grains.

In June, if we’re lucky, the rain stops, the sun shines, and the seed heads ripen, plump and ready. Workers arrive, out-of-state relatives or teenaged kids of former harvest help, ready to drive combines, sack seed, or bale the straw. They join brokers, seed lab workers, truck drivers, and farmers in a complicated web that gathers the seed and moves it through a process that ends with lawns in the Midwest or pastures in Alabama. The straw, left behind after the seed is removed, is baled, compacted, and shipped to China and Korea.

Since the 1920s, when ryegrass was first introduced as a crop in Oregon, an entire culture and industry has grown around it. In contrast to agriculture in much of the U.S., farmers in this area keep ownership and control of the crop through the cleaning process and then sell directly to a broker.

Many of the farmers clean their own seed, removing weed seeds and chaff with a series of fans and screens, then bag it in 50-pound sacks and store it until they decide the time is right to sell.

The first field in my neighborhood to be cut was a fescue field north of us. Every farmer in the county took note, I think, as each pondered the crucial decision of when to cut their own grass. Too early, the seed isn’t fully developed or at its optimal weight. Too late, and it might shatter and drop to the ground where the combines can’t pick it up.

A teenaged great-nephew is flying in soon for a summer of sacking seed, toiling in the heat and dust to fill and stack 50-pound bags of seed, repeating the pattern of dozens of cousins and uncles before him. Like them, he will know fatigue, sore muscles, an insatiable appetite, and a unique sense of satisfaction. Our middle daughter came back home last week to drive a windrower and combine for a neighbor.

Sixty-six years ago, the year my husband was born, Orval Smucker built a warehouse to clean and store his and other farmers’ seed. Orval passed the business to his son Wilton and then, in 2000, the business passed to Wilton’s son Paul, my husband.

For the 26th year in a row, Paul and his employees are preparing the Wilton Smucker Warehouse for harvest. They empty bins, sweep storage bays, fix leaks, and check the cleaner.

This will be the warehouse’s final year as a seed-cleaning enterprise, as Paul has decided to retire. None of our children want to take over at this time, so a nephew will use the bins and baggers and bays to expand his feed business.

I am waxing nostalgic, remembering my first introduction to the warehouse when we were dating, and how Paul showed me how to sack seed and took me up the “manlift” elevator and a few makeshift ladders to the top of the warehouse, 90 feet high. I recall later summers when Paul worked 16-hour days and came home exhausted and dusty, daughters drove combines all day and came home at 10 at night, and sons and nephews sacked seed and kept me busy with constant cooking. Despite the challenges, we all had a sense of being part of something much bigger than ourselves, and a sense of accomplishment when the last seed was safely gathered in.

The farmers who bring their seed to our warehouse have found other places to clean it next year. They will be fine. In fact, the pollen will fly without any coaching from us, the sun will shine, God willing, and the rush of harvest will again arrive like a freight train. Nodoubt we will watch from the front porch as the chaff billows behind a combine, and we will sniff the sharp, indescribable scent of a golden field of grass and feel like we are somehow still a part of the encompassing, fascinating, and unique experience of grass seed harvest in Oregon.