Yellow Trail from Texas

It features Dale and Marjorie Starks, their nine MF 760 combines and the temporary crews who work their way north with seven months of contract cutting. Base camp is in Texas where they start harvesting. Good archive footage deals with the settling of the prairies, cattle wars and the first short-stemmed wheat brought from Russia by the Mennonites. Mid-summer finds the crews in Kansas where we learn more about their catering and domestic arrangements as well as the Ford trucks used for transport to the mill. In Montana the men put in long hours, working through the night. Another feature deals with the Chicago wheat trade and bread-making. At the end of the season the machines are cropping canary seed in Saskatchewan, leaving the cut stalks in windrows before they are picked up and threshed. When the first snows fall, it's time to head south for home again. Producer Tim Slessor tells a good, complete story, supported by memorable aerial shots and liberal use of 1970s music.