(submitted photo/Kristine Hurd)

By Alice McFarlane

Crop Report

Rain delays slow harvest operations

Sep 19, 2019 | 12:04 PM

Warm weather and wind allowed combining to resume but progress is still lagging behind the five-year average.

According to the latest crop report, 23 per cent of the crop is now in the bin which is up from 18 per cent last week. The five-year average is 50 per cent.

The northeast is reporting 15 per cent combined which is where Carrot River area farmer Spencer Maxwell is located. He said rain caused numerous delays.

“We’ve mainly been working on wheat. I think if we would have had the weather we probably would have started on time, but for probably a good month we were getting rain every three days so that really doesn`t help much,” Maxwell said. “I think things are turning ripe pretty good. We had a field of wheat that was under seeded so we couldn’t desiccate it. We never needed to go swath it. We’re straight cutting it now when we can get going.”

Maxwell said quality looks good but they haven’t had too many samples in for grading yet.

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“We’ve got a pretty good crop up here. We had a lot of subsoil moisture to start with. We’ve been wet for the last decade. So when everyone else was really dry we still had the moisture leftover from the excess we had in years past so it got a really good start.”

Maxwell grows canola, oats, flax, alsike clover and annual rye grass. He said doing the bulk of combining in October is not unusual for the area.

“Nothing we’re not used to up in this corner of the world. We’ve been using our dryer. You’d like to wait for dry stuff but after last year 20 per cent moisture wheat looked good so we decided we better get going and I think that was the general feeling in the rest of the area, too.”

There hasn’t been a killing frost in the area. Maxwell said that’s not a big concern right now.

“We’re in decent shape. We’ve got all of the canola down already and most of the crop started to turn. If we did get a frost, it might even straighten the weather out.”

Maxwell said the biggest challenge facing producers is dealing with lower prices.

“That’s a tough one. Everyone is in a different situation depending on their own farm practices. I’ve noticed there’s quite a few bins going up on the highway so I think guys are trying to build up a little bit of storage so they can hold on to it for better prices. I really hope to see things turn around because we could sure use it,” Maxwell said. “Just gotta hope for good weather. I hope everyone has a good harvest.”

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter @AliceMcF