Long weekend brings rough weather in the final weeks of harvest

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According to the latest crop report from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, which covers the week ending Monday, harvest is 82 per cent complete across the province.

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That’s up from 63 per cent the previous week.

While progress has been made, producers are still behind the five-year average of 97 per cent and the 10-year average of 88 per cent.

Brian Andrew farms just north of Craven and said his family was fortunate to have just finished harvest. However, he said this weekend’s weather could be detrimental for other farmers still in the field.

“You can only do so much work in a day, but then you would evaluate the rain or snow that came, and hopefully it dries again and lets you get back out the field. But it could be a season-ending event at this point of the year,” he said.

Rain has been a challenge for farmers throughout the year.

Andrew said it significantly disrupted his family’s schedule in September.

“We had a lot of rain and we were very wet to start the season, but we seeded and the crops grew quite well. Then we were dry in the summer, but in September we had a rain delay that was about three weeks for us, so we were about a third done harvest in August, then the rain came, and we got going again in the middle third week of September, and that was a big delay,” Andrew said.

“We lost basically three weeks of harvest weather, and those are pretty good harvest days in early September. But then the weather did turn for us, and we got going, and we had some good days after. But we ended up probably a week to 10 days behind what I would call a normal harvest finish,” he said.

According to the ministry, all winter cereals and the majority of pulse crops have been harvested, with significant progress made on spring cereals.

However, yields vary throughout Saskatchewan due to differences in rainfall.

As for the overall harvest this year, Andrew said his family’s results were much better than initially expected.

“July and August were very hot, very dry, and we thought maybe that would hurt our crop potential. But our yields ended up being maybe a bit better than average, so we were pleasantly surprised once we got going,” he said.