The ultimate guide to building a model harvest crew,
Part one in a series
Five big combines, two tractors, two grain carts, eight semis, header trailers, service trucks, bunk house, travel trailers, all marching north and south chasing wheat harvest. What is it about all this massive machinery moving up and down the highway that captivates the imagination? Is it the volume of iron? The matched up trucks and combines? The gypsy lifestyle of taking six months off from the real world and saying “F it, I’m going on wheat harvest?”
Whatever it is the site of harvesting causes me to do crazy things like pull off the side of a busy highway and shoot video and pictures of these men and women making their living. I build up to two hours into my travel schedule during harvest to ensure I have time for harvester photo opportunities and conversations. My kids make fun of the noises I make when we stumble upon a cutter moving down the highway. Whatever the motivation is, the sights and sounds of wheat harvest are crack cocaine for this desk jockey and because you are reading this, I imagine you feel the same way.
The beautiful world we live in now affords those of us with a romantic infatuation with wheat harvest to live vicariously through many harvesters who post photos and video on Facebook, YouTube, and company websites. Who knew watching a 20-minute video of a group of people making their living would get half a million plus video views? Thank goodness we have the opportunity to see firsthand the people and machines that bring our food from farm to our grocery store.
What is more fun is that now we can recreate what the real harvesters use in models. Not any models, but world class models that make imagination reality.
Why write a book on creating a harvest crew in models? For the last few years I have created a great little business replicating trucks, combines, and trailers for custom harvesters and the people who work(ed) the summer harvesting wheat. Rockin H Models are all over the world serving as permanent memories of adventures in the wheat belt. A silent sentinel waiting to tell a story for the owner or a friend stopping by. The story of fighting mud, changing tires along the highway, a great party in an RV park in a Vernon, Texas, Altus, Oklahoma, Flagler, Colorado, Whitney, Nebraska, Blunt, South Dakota or Jordan, Montana. The new friends from Missouri, Alabama, England, Scotland and Wails. These are only a few reasons to create replicas of machines.
What I have found is Rockin H has a limiting factor. I cannot produce everything these great people desire. Since 2012 more than 90 videos, including a variety of great tutorials, have been created to help the Rockin H community recreate their memories in 1/64 scale models. What I have lacked all this time is an entry level narrative for the folks that do not know where to start.
In this book we will explore how we on the sidelines, or even those in the field bringing in the harvest, can recreate, in models, the machines doing this work. We will bounce back and forth from the real harvester to the models so each carpet cutter can create in detail the model harvest crew we have daydreamed about; to tell the story of a point in life we love and hold close.
Pack your bags, we are going on a Rockin journey.
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Thanks Eric
Great Idea. I hope you post lots of photos along with the text.
Thanks Steven, yes the version I will have for sale will be picture rich of models and real machines. I am combing through pictures several havesters have given me permission to use. Thanks for the comment.
Eric