Edward Henry Buchmann

July 15, 1917 – November 4, 2016

Edward Henry Buchmann was born on July 15, 1917 in Blue Grass, North Dakota, near Hazen. He joined his Lord Jesus and his parents and siblings in Heaven on Nov. 4, 2016 in Moses Lake.

A lifelong pioneer farmer, Eddie came to the Moses Lake area in 1938, having traveled from North Dakota and on through Montana before arriving in Washington to seek out employment at the age of twenty.

In his early years in the Columbia Basin, Eddie drove school bus for Moses Lake School District, operated a house-moving business, was part owner in a furniture store near present-day Neppel Landing and owned several houses in Wheeler. He and his father, Alex Buchmann, were partners in a grocery store in Wheeler when it was a thriving railroad tank town. Ed participated in the wild horse roundup in the Ephrata hills, collecting bucking stock for the fledgling Grant County Rodeo.

Ed Buchmann was a veteran of World War II, serving in 1943 in a coastal artillery unit stationed at Fort Worden, near Port Angeles, guarding the Pacific shore from Japanese invasion. Upon discharge he returned to Moses Lake to pursue farming.

In 1947 Eddie, and his new wife, Doris Ottmar Buchmann, bought a dryland farm north of Wheeler, which he eventually developed into a highly productive sugar beet and wheat farm. In the early 1950s the construction of the East Low Canal cut through the middle of his property.

The Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, brought irrigation to the fertile dry land. At its completion, Eddie was chosen to receive early test-water. During the construction of the waterway, Eddie, employed by the Steel Construction Company, operated large cranes, setting several bridges over various smaller canals in the O’Sullivan Reservoir area.

At the peak of his farming and ranching years, primarily in the 1960s and ’70s, Eddie ran an operation of several thousand acres, both irrigated and dryland, ranging from the Wheeler corridor to sections above Soap Lake and the Dry Coulee area. At various times he ran a herd of about 100 head of beef stock. He was at home on the back of a horse, and his two most beloved mounts — Shane and Coco — were his means of moving stock from one pasture to another.

Ed Buchmann’s knowledge of farming was well known in the Basin. His high-yielding sugar beets, excelling in both tonnage and sugar content, garnered him some of the largest allotments granted for raising beets, in upward of 300 acres. His skills as a wheat farmer found him raising test crops for large agricultural labs, earning him the moniker, according to a friend, of The Wheat Whisperer. A film crew from Portland once rode with him on his combine, recording the harvesting of a new strain of wheat, which Ed logged staggering yields of over 130 bushels to the acre, far above anticipated expectations at the time in the 1960s.

Eddie enjoyed hunting and once bagged a moose in Canada, and often told stories of his days hunting coyotes when their pelts were worth money. An avid fisherman, he enjoyed taking the boat out with his grandsons on Moses Lake or in the hidden watering holes along the basalt corridors towards Dry Falls. One of his later joys was traveling the United States in a motor home with his wife, Linda, and fishing with her on Lake Roosevelt.

Buchmann was preceded in death by his wife, Linda Buchmann; parents, Alex and Emma Buchmann; sisters Ella Schmidt, Ruth Deal, Rosella Gill Saxby and Delores Doris Buchmann, (infant) and brothers Ervin Buchmann, Edmund Buchmann, Gordon Buchmann, Raymond Buchmann, Leroy Buchmann and Marvin Buchmann. He is survived by sister, Lillian Schmidt, brother Elmer Buchmann and his first wife and friend Doris Buchmann.

He is also survived by his children Priscilla (Perci) Owens of Wenatchee, Wash; Edward (Hank) Buchmann, Jr. of Ritzville; Wash. and Michele Johnson of Ephrata, Wash., and stepdaughters Jeannie Marchand of East Wenatchee, Wash., Cindy Lambert of Port Angeles, Wash. and Jamie Rosofsky of Moses Lake. He is also survived by 20 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren and numerous nephews and nieces. Grandchildren always put a twinkle in his eye.

Memorial for Edward Buchmann will be on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 1 p.m. at Grace Lutheran Church, 303 Nelson Road, with a reception to follow.