How The Wheat Goes

An excerpt from a book I recently read called Wheat Kings: Vanishing Landmarks of the Canadian Prairies.

It's the consummate prairie experience: stepping into an aging country elevator and savouring the rich aroma of new wheat and old wood; listening to the chirping birds while trading stories with the manager; watching battered old grain trucks arrive and talking bushels-per-acre, moisture content, dockage, and the politics of farming with the drivers. It's marveling at the maze of garner levers, slides and scales, legs, cups, boots and belts - and choking back the dust as the manager puts them all into motion to move the latest load of grain from the receiving pit to storage bins.

And then the grain goes into the trains. They line up in seemingly endless chains of cars with Canada painted on the side, the chaff dust in the air thick and a little resplendent. Sometimes I drive out to the prairie and park near an elevator and watch the trains moving in and being filled and moving out again - all huff and puff and clank and grind. Voices ("Here, there, hold 'er up") come through the dry mist and another car moves ahead. It's staggering: the volume, the motion, the process, the trains.

something to read

Self-portraiture, Laura Kicey tells us, "is an intimate act." In Self:Interest Laura not only turns the camera on herself, she does the same thing with the pen. Self:Interest is a revealing look into the psyche of one of our most expressive self-portrait artists.

source: utata.org