Silos like the one seen here just of Highway 195, dot the landscape between Spokane and Pullman, Wash.

Washington’s wheat, barley, and lentil country is dotted with silos that hold the crops til they find their buyers on the national and international markets. Some of that grain eventually arrives where I live, in Seattle, and is moved onto ships that sail off to faraway ports, in China, Japan, and wherever the market dictates. In many ways these silos serve as landmarks to the global trade upon which nearly all of these farmers and this state are dependent. (Click on the photography to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)