CARLYLE — William Brown has made significant progress for this year’s harvest, and is pleased with the yields and the crop quality he has seen.
Brown farms about 8,000 acres of land 16 kilometres south of Carlyle. They grow wheat, barley, canola, canary seed and peas. He is at about 60 per cent complete, as of Friday morning.
The peas, wheat and barley are finished, while the canola is about 40 per cent complete. They have not started harvesting the canary seed. Precipitation last week caused a setback for a couple of days, but he was hoping to be back into the field Friday afternoon.
The rain allowed Brown to dedicate time to fixing equipment and making sure it’s ready to go once they did return to the field.
“Yields on the cereals were probably average to above average,” said Brown.
The wheat is about 65 bushels an acre, while the barley is at 85 or 90 bushels. The peas were below average at around 35-40 bushels.
Quality, meanwhile, looks pretty good for all of his crops.
“The barley all graded a malt, the wheat seems to be grading a 1 or a 2, and the peas look fine, too,” said Brown.
It was a challenging spring for the farm. Due to the snow in April and the moisture in May and early June, they finished seeding on June 18. Normally they would like to have everything wrapped up on June 1. Harvest would normally start in the middle of August, but he started at least a week later than normal. Others in the area started a couple weeks later than normal, too. .
“The summer weather seemed to have caught the crop up. We’re not too far behind in our harvest. We’re a little bit behind, but pretty close to usual.”
Many of the producers he knows in the region were also happy with the weather conditions in the growing season. Canola yields were a little disappointing for some, but they’re happy with everything else.
Grasshoppers have been a problem for many in southern Saskatchewan, said Brown, but they didn’t affect their crop. The insects were fairly problematic with the pastureland, but they weren’t as bad in other areas. He has heard they were worse closer to Estevan, and it sounds like some areas had more grasshoppers than last year.
