Farmers in the Northwest are hoping forecasts of warmer temperatures come true for the coming weeks as the entire province remains behind schedule with the harvest.
According to Grant McLean at Saskatchewan Agriculture, the latest crop report shows only 18 per cent of the crop provincially has been combined as of this week.
This is "considerably behind where we would normally expect to be at this time of the year," McLean said.
Usually at this time of year about 65 per cent of the harvest would be combined, based on the five-year provincial average. An additional 41 per cent has been swathed or is ready to straight combine.
To blame for the delay has been the moisture situation and the rains across the province this year, with McLean saying last week's significant rainfall is continuing to delay progress.
"It's been a frustrating two or three weeks here," said McLean.
The Northwest is particularly behind schedule with only 11 per cent of the crop combined between Sept. 14 to 20. That compares to 17 per cent in the Northeast, nine per cent in the West, 15 per cent in East Central, 25 per cent in the Southwest and 26 per cent in southeast Saskatchewan.
Last year, 29 per cent was combined by now in the Northwest, McLean said.
While waiting to resume combining, farmers are doing their best to swath, haul bales and complete other fall work.
Most of the work going on in the Northwest has been swathing of cerails and canola. In that area, McLean said, Northwest producers have made considerable progress with 57 percent of the crop either swathed or ready to combine.
Dan Holman, marketing manager at the North West Terminal Ltd. at Unity, said the crop report is in line with what he's heard about the progress so far.
As far as progress is concerned, "very little has been made in the last month or so," Holman said.
He said a little bit of peas and a little bit of canola has been harvested. He said the pulse are 60-70 per cent complete. The lentls are just getting started and canola and wheat are under 10 per cent as well.
But even the peas are usually harvested in August, Holman said.
It's about "three weeks behind normal," he observed.
While it is an unusually late crop this year, "we've had years where it's been as late as this before," Holman said.
He expected canola and wheat operations to gain momentum over the past weekend. He expects that harvesting will go ahead wheather the crops are dry or not. Holman said his terminal has some efficient drying facilities and a lot of other elevators have similar capacity, he said.
"There's ample time to get the crop off this year," he added.
It has been a heavy year for rain, with totals ranging from 326 mls to almost 660 mls of rain recorded in the Northwest area.
A concern lately has been frost, with cold temperatures hitting the province Sept. 17 and 18. Most of the crop damage has been rain and frost related, with other damage including lodging, bleaching and sprouting. The moisture and the frost have been heavily on the mind of producers right now, said McLean.
Area farmers have said they are at a standstill at the moment because of the cold and wet weather that has been in the area for the past week.
Yields have been all over the map in the province because of the conditions, McLean said, with some reporting poor yields while others are reporting super yields.
Roland Olson of Pioneer Grain, Turtleford, is reporting the yields in the Northwest region are looking good, all the way from the Battlefords to Meadow Lake and down to Lloydminster.
His assessment of the situation in the Northwest is more upbeat.
"We're behind a bit, but making good progress compared to the rest of the province."
In his area he is reporting they are on average 35-40 per cent done, with the peas 80 per cent done.
He is reporting more progress with canola and wheat, with terminals drying the canola and farmers drying the wheat. But like other regions the crops are about two weeks behind schedule there.
Farmers were looking for one thing in the coming weeks, he said: "sunny, warm weather. That's all we need."
For farmers frustrated with the recent rains and frost conditions, some relief was expected to come in the days ahead.
Warm weather was forecast beginning the weekend of Sept. 25. McLean said warm fall temperatures would go a long way towards drying out the fields from all the moisture and would allow farmers to get a lot of work done. He said farmers are hoping for late-September weather similar to last year, when it was "like July", he said.
"If we had four weeks of really nice warm weather," said McLean, similar to what happened last year, that "would go a long way to getting a significant portion of this crop off."
