PLEASANT VIEW -- A 65-year tradition is ending -- Don Budge is selling his two big red Ferguson combines to another farmer.
Thus ends an era of continuous grain harvesting for the Budge family in Box Elder and Weber counties, including Ogden Valley.
Budge was there from the beginning, working for his father in the first harvest at age 12.
"They are probably the longest continuously running grain combine people," Lynn Humphreys, of North Ogden, said of the Budge family.
"They've been a great institution in this county. ... It's been a real epic thing, I've been here my whole life, I don't know anyone who has done that kind of baling or combine. This is real custom work."
It's a story of aging farmers as well as aging farmland.
Many of the local fields the family has harvested, trucking the grain to the mills since 1945, now sport houses and businesses -- all in the name of progress.
"His business has been slower over the years because of development," Humphreys said. "A lot of houses went up in the fields they used to combine."
At 76, Budge continued this summer to display a work ethic for which farmers are known as he drove a combine for his last harvest.
But now that the grain harvest is over, Budge is calling it quits.
"This was always a summer job," he said. "I guess I hung onto it because I got farm blood in me. It's been a fun experience. I knew it would have to come to an end. ... It's kind of an end of an era in a way."
Humphreys and his family worked for the farming Budge family when he was a boy.
He recalls matriarch Josephine Budge making a boxed lunch for the farmhands that rivaled any Thanksgiving feast. "She would bring the most beautiful box lunches imaginable."
The operation was started by Budge's father, Wallace Don Budge, in the summer of 1945.
He said the first combines his father used had to be pulled behind tractors. Someone had to ride on the back of the machines to keep switching back and forth between empty and full bags of grain that were dropped throughout the fields for farmers to pick up and empty by hand into their silos.
His father bought his first self-propelled combine in 1949 and a second one in 1951.
The family dedicated 65 summers to the operation, driving the huge machines on gravel roads up the North Ogden Divide for many of those years.
Budge retired 10 years ago as a Brigham Young University professor of civil engineering and now lives in Utah County. He said he kept farming when he became a professor because BYU could not afford to keep its full staff on during the summer when there weren't as many students.
"I volunteered to employ myself during the summer," he said.
Budge's brother, Thom, also dedicated his summers to the task. He died last fall just after the harvest was complete.
Also an educator, Thom Budge was a former Bonneville High School football coach.
The football field at Bonneville High School is jointly named for Thom and his father, Wallace, who donated funds for the first lights on the field.
Another brother, Scott Budge, also worked in the family operation for many years until his death, Humphreys said.
Humphreys' brother, David Humphreys, of Ogden, helped out the operation this summer by driving Thom's combine for the harvest.
He volunteered for the task last fall at Thom's viewing, knowing Thom and Don had made promises last summer to area farmers and ranchers.
But even though the family's days of farming are over, Lynn Humphreys said the Budge brothers' worth ethic will continue to serve area farmers as it lives on in the equipment sold Friday.
"They were good at vehicle maintenance, even keeping the combines washed and waxed," Lynn Humphreys said.
"These machines, even though they were new in the '70s, will go on for another life because of the care (Don Budge) gave them."
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