Wow! It’s finally over and it was a very exasperating harvest. Lots of downtime due to weather. We only got one extra premium pay day. Towards the end, people with other commitments were leaving. We lost enough people at Stephen that a decision was made to just run a day shift with the remaining employees. We got one day shift in, then got stopped for weather again. After 2 days of everyone readjusting to a normal day cycle, the hotline message at 11 AM said to check back at 6 PM for a possible restart that night. No mention of extra incentive pay. I (and a few others) had no desire to switch from day to night again on such short notice so we notified Express that we were done.

While the remaining workers still had several hours to go on their last shift, I pulled out of the campground. One of these days I’ll catch a break on winds but not this time. The first third of the trip was into a direct headwind, the next third was a crosswind and the final third was back to a headwind.

I’m seriously considering Amazon next year instead of the sugar beet harvest. They’ve increased their wages, the weather is not a factor, and you have a firm end date so you can make plans and reservations based on that. The work is harder but since I know what to expect I should be able to prepare better before arrival.

On to the Pacific northwest!!