Further completion of harvest operations occurred in the southeast area, with producers taking advantage of warmer-than-average October temperatures.
Further completion of harvest operations occurred in the southeast area, with producers taking advantage of warmer-than-average October temperatures. The one concern they have now is that the days are getting shorter, which makes the fields tougher and forces operations to shut down earlier.
In the last week, producers in southeast Saskatchewan completed an extra 31 per cent of their harvest operations. The region now has 62 per cent of the 2010 crop combined and an additional 26 per cent is swathed or ready to straight-combine.
"The last 10 days of warm weather have been fantastic and we have progressed to having less than a quarter left to harvest," said Brad Eggum. "We have finished durum and canola, with the canola looking to be in good shape while the durum looks to be at feed quality."
Particularly for the Eggum productions, they are quite excited for their soybean crops, which are being harvested on 850 acres. "It is a new crop for this area, so we had seeded a lot of variety trials and are quite interested in the results to see which varieties work the best," said Eggum.
"The soybean and everything else in our fields look fine," reported Eggum. "We were worried for the flax, since it was green at the time of that early frost, but it has held up okay."
"Harvest operations are going very well, they have been steady for the last two weeks. We are now are 80 per cent completed for our operations," said Fillmore area farmer Russell Leguee. "The yields are looking to be average, but the quality is below average and that is for most farmers in the area."
From the harvest operations for Leguee, "the canola and the flax held up well, but both wheat and durum were hit hard. It is accurate to rate them at feed."
For Weyburn producer Dave Lazurko, he has finished his lentils and reported they were not in good shape. He had just started working on canola and was unable to determine what it would look like. One thing for certain was that moisture issues have made both yields and quality "pretty disappointing."
According to the weekly crop report from the Ministry of Agriculture, crop reporters are indicating yields and crop grades as quite variable. Harvested spring wheat was reported at nine per cent 1 CW, 28 per cent 2 CW, 34 per cent 3 CW and 29 per cent CW feed.
To finish harvest operations, the producers are going to "keep the eye on the ball and keep our fingers crossed for continued warmer weather," said Eggum. "You forget how late you are in the season with this beautiful weather, but we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for harvest operations."
"We still need six weeks of harvest weather, especially since we have a lot of spraying and fall tillage that needs to be completed," said Leguee. "We still have to be careful in the fields and on the roads because they are still pretty soft."
With the wet areas still remaining in the fields, grain trucks are being left at the edge of the field or on the road to avoid getting stuck. Most of the crops harvested this week were put into storage dry.
