‘Promising’ harvest starts out west

Combines began cutting Whitman County wheat fields out west this week, bringing in a long-delayed crop that could make a lot of farmers very happy.

“It looks promising. This could be a good crop,” Tom Cauley at Ritzville Warehouse’s LaCrosse plant said Tuesday.

Cauley began unloading trucks from wheat fields south of LaCrosse in earnest Monday, about two weeks later than usual.

Harvest has been delayed by this year’s record soggy spring.

In the eastern part of Whitman County, Ben Barstow, president of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, said he is running at least two weeks behind sch...