It took a lot of workers to harvest the grain from the fields. The harvesters then, as they do today, travel the countryside with their machines to be hired by the farmers. No farm can afford keep that many workers employed full time, nor can they afford the expensive reapers that are only needed a few days each year. Today the custom harvesters load their reapers onto trucks and travel the prairie highways at harvest time. They start in the south where crops mature earlier and work their way north to Canada.

Page last updated August 5, 2002.