By Alex Soloducha

Harvest held up by rain but still ahead of schedule

Sep 11, 2015 | 5:00 PM

Farmers in Saskatchewan are nearing the halfway mark as the harvest season continues into mid September.

So far, 40 per cent of this year’s crops are now in the bin, with an added 33 per cent already swathed or ready to straight cut, according to the Saskatchewan Agriculture Crop Report. Farmers may be ahead of schedule with the five-year average around 25 per cent combined by this time of the year.

Regionally, producers in southern Saskatchewan are ahead of the provincial average.

Farmers in the east-central and northwestern regions have 22 per cent combined. Twenty per cent of harvest is done in the northeast region.  Thirty-three per cent of the crop is combined in the west-central region.

Heavy rain over the weekend has caused delays across the province.  According to the report, rainfall ranged from small amounts to over four inches in some southeastern areas.

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Shannon Friesen, with Sask. Ag, said there was up to six inches in Estevan, while in the Prince Albert area rain ranged from one to two inches.

“Not only will it prevent us from getting in the field because the fields are too muddy and equipment will get stuck, the grain and the straw will be very tough so it won’t move through the combine very easily,” said Friesen. “It will also cause issues with quality which will likely lead to some down grading at the elevator.”

Friesen said farmers will be hoping for a good stretch of warm and dry weather, with some wind to help dry crops out.  So far, warm weather has been hard to come by.

“If for example, there is standing crop, hopefully the wind is able to get through there and dry things down,” said Friesen. “If there’s swathed crop, sometimes having more wind will be more detrimental because it will actually blow the swaths around.”

“Hopefully we’re back in the field by the end of this week, but it’s likely to be the weekend for other producers and maybe even early next week if they got a lot more rain.”

The majority of topsoil moisture conditions are currently average.

According to Saskatchewan Agriculture, yields are varying majorly across the province, but overall are estimated to be close to average. 

Follow the 2015 Crop Report on Twitter at @SKAgriculture.

asoloducha@panow.com

On Twitter: @alex_soloducha