Farmers, neighbors avoid worst

The late pulse crop harvest – garbanzos and lentils – continues on the Palouse, with some fields abandoned, some seeded right over the top for next year's wheat and some cut.

The delays were due to waiting out moisture; farmers hoping that beans would dry out enough to reach standards at the grain elevators for sale.

“It was a testament to the three to four neighbors, five to 10 combines on a field on those few afternoons they could go,” said Allen Druffel, a farmer outside Colton and chairman of the Washington Pulse Crops Commission.

Once cut, many growers took trucks of garbanzos to rented (...