ESTEVAN - While this spring has certainly posed challenges for producers, they’re optimistic about the upcoming harvest season.
Blake Brownridge, who farms land in the RMs of Brock, Browning and Moose Mountain, said there is a lot of optimism in the region. The snowstorms that occurred in mid-to-late April, followed by unseasonably cold temperatures, delayed the start of seeding for him and other producers in the region.
“The crop was, in general, two weeks later starting than most of us are used to the last couple of years, anyways,” said Brownridge. “And then we fought quite a bit of weather, basically. Getting the crop in and getting it sprayed the first go-around was challenging for sure.”
It’s definitely a stark contrast to the past couple of years, when they started seeding in April.
“You definitely appreciate it, the fields that were dried the last couple of years, for just efficiency in general,” said Brownridge.
They didn’t have to worry about equipment getting stuck in the mud or the vehicles being slowed down by soggy conditions.
“Field by field, there were certain areas that were wetter than others, and there was a lot of extra work just in general to put the crop in, maybe some tillage before seeding a field. It was a lot of extra work to get things into the ground this year as opposed to previous years.”
Regardless, there will always be weather-related hiccups to contend with between seeding, growing and harvesting.
Moisture conditions are still pretty good in the area.
“Because it’s a wet crop and they’re shallow rooted, if we do turn hot and dry, they could suffer a little bit that way, just not having the root development that they would have on a drier year,” Brownridge said.
Later crops in the region might need one more blast of precipitation, but most should be good now, unless it’s really hot and really dry between now and the start of harvest.
“For the most part, everybody around here is hoping that we don’t get the extreme storms that have been going through some areas. Even just east of us, not too far, they’ve had some five and six-inch rains. None of us wants to see that.”
Crop development has been slow until the last 10-14 days, but the heat and warmer nights of late have helped.
Brownridge expects harvest in the area will begin with pulse crops in the later part of August.
“If it still stays cool and stuff like that and the crop can flower longer … we could be [harvesting on the] Labour Day long weekend, but there could be some pulses combined before that in our area.”
There are reasons to be optimistic for producers in the area, Brownridge said, because the crops look really good.
“Everybody seems pretty happy, pretty excited with what they have for the most part. There are always a few fields that are disappointing, whether it be heavy rains after we seeded them. Or you had some bug issues in the spring here with some of the crops and canola, so some of them got thinned down, but they look like they’re coming back pretty well.”
