Oct. 19--All great things come to an end. This was the last year that Walt Rose, a nightshift worker at the MillerCoors elevator in Burley, will work the annual harvest in Idaho. After more than 40 years with Coors, he decided to retire.

"I guess people with my experience never really retire, they just become consultants," he mused while watching the sun set from a catwalk above the grain silos.

From his vantage point more than 90 feet above the sprawling elevator, Rose could see what the industry has become in Idaho. He could see fields of barley forming a patchwork pattern on the horizon. He could see the test plots where Coors created the strain of barley known as Moravian 69, which is now grown across the western United States.

Pointing to the massive concrete barley bins that stretched in front of him, Rose spoke about the magnitude of what was to come during the harvest.

"There are eight bins that are each 410 feet long, 110 feet wide and 40 feet high,"he said. "Each one could house an indoor football field with a small stadium.

"They're mostly empty now, but this is the calm before the storm."

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The storm begins in western Idaho during the first week of July, moving east like a cloud of insects stripping fields bare. Hundreds of grain haulers begin to move across southern Idaho in columns, shipping barley from fields to the elevator in Burley.

Ron Elkin, co-owner of one of the largest barley farms in the Pacific Northwest, near Hagerman, said frantic, 15-hour days are the rule.

"The days are pretty long until we get it done," he said, driving a tractor and loader on a dusty road through a sea of barley and wheat. "Everyone has seen or heard of someone who let their crop sit an extra day and a hail storm or something took it out -- we don't let that happen."

But timing the threshing, transport and delivery to MillerCoors can be daunting; sometimes it can be downright messy.

More than 260 Idaho growers rely on fewer than 500 trucks suitable for hauling malt barley, some making a two-hour drive each way. While smaller growers often use their own trucks, larger growers like Elkin contract with trucking companies to rotate three or more trucks at a time.

Kris Smelser, Idaho regional manager for MillerCoors, said that during peak harvest the elevator will receive as many as 300 loads daily -- about 15 million pounds. Coors previously operated a second elevator near Buhl, but consolidated operations in 2005 to cut costs. The Burley elevator has the capacity to hold more than 83.7 million pounds of barley.

"We get our first loads from western Idaho growers because the climate is more temperate and the crops are further along," Smelser said. "By mid-July we will be full-swing and it will get pretty interesting."

During peak harvest the trucks often wait at the elevator in a column that can stretch up to a mile. When that happens, tempers flare.

"We're waiting on the trucks that are waiting for things to start moving at the elevator in Burley," said Elkin, with a sense of frustration in his voice on the first day of harvest. "Every minute we wait is money lost on fuel and labor."

The three combines that were slicing through fields of barley sat idled -- their bins overflowing with the first kernels of the harvest.

Pat Elkin, Ron Elkin's father and co-owner of the massive farm near Hagerman, pinched a kernel from the blade of an idle combine. The meaty center slipped out of the husk.

"That's exactly what we're looking for," said Elkin, who has grown barley for almost 50 years. "That's good because we grew a little extra this year."

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Fields nothing more than a fuzz of green five months ago now were an ocean of gold all the way to the horizon.

Idaho farmers grew optimistic about the value of their harvest in mid-July, after hearing that barley in Montana and Wyoming was damaged by drought. That would force brewers to buy every kernel they could find in Idaho.

Still, elevator operators in Burley have final say on whether barley fits strict brewery standards. It's the kind of question a farmer like Elkin can get answered only when the trucks make the delivery.

The tense silence was broken just before 8 a.m. when a column of empty trucks could be seen in the distance, given away by plumes of dust rising from the road.

Seconds later a column of trucks rolled into the field where three threshers and a loader were waiting to offload.

"All right, here we go," Elkin said, as the tractors moved into two columns, leaving space for trucks in the middle. "Make sure you stand upwind."

Soon thick clouds of dust and chaff rose like smoke from a wildfire as the combines disgorged barley.

Drivers with bandanas tied over their mouths and noses guided the threshers and loader, chaff covering faces, necks and arms, irritating their skin in the hot July sun.

"You get used to it," said Peggy Brown, a driver for southern Idaho-based Bing Trucking Co.

"You have to get used to it if you're going to haul barley," she added as she rolled a canvas cover over the load.

Brown and hundreds of other laborers would live and breath the heat and dust for 12 hours a day through harvest's end.

The barley industry employs more than 4,700 people in Idaho who handle everything from marketing to irrigation pipe. Total earnings are estimated at $115 million per year, though a quarter of the jobs are seasonal.

After the trucks were filled and covered, Brown shook off her handkerchief and made the long drive to Burley, where tempers were running hot.

A grain truck had broken down at the MillerCoors elevator. The driver, told to go to the end of the line to fix his rig, cursed the order that would eat more time. The grower he was hauling for would have to wait about an hour longer to send another load.

During the harvest, 'wait' is an obscene word.

"The drivers don't always like the decisions we make, but we have to keep things moving," said Smelser, who monitored the situation from the testing station at the elevator's entrance. Smelser, a soft-spoken agronomist, has grown accustomed to harvest-time tension in three seasons at the Burley elevator.

His station checks every truck, sticking a vacuum that resembles a giant syringe into each load to take three samples. Nutrient content, damage and other factors are assessed by women who bag and record each sample.

By harvest's end, they will have tested more than 5,000 loads of malt barley -- rejecting some with one word uttered through a speaker box: 'Rejected.'

But by late July it was apparent that Idaho had a bumper crop of top quality.

The good news came to the Elkins at the end of the nearly two-week harvest:Not one kernel rejected. It would be the most profitable malt barley crop the partners have ever grown.

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By August the last kernels were trickling in from far eastern Idaho.

For Peggy Brown, Walt Rose, Ron Elkin and others, it seemed the chaotic harvest had ended just as soon as it began.

From Burley, the malt barley will be shipped, seven rail cars per day for a year, to breweries nationwide. Most will go to the sprawling MillerCoors plant at Golden, Colo.

In September, after harvest's end, Walt Rose took a break from his night shift, returning to the catwalk high above the bins. The drone of conveyor belts, tractors and train cars rose from below.

"I don't think people know what goes into that one can of beer, or how much of it comes from places like little old Idaho," he said, watching the sunset paint the horizon gold and red.

"That's too bad -- it kinda' makes the beer at the end of the day taste better."

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Copyright (c) 2009, The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho

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