Local farmers are cleaning their combines and crossing their fingers this week in preparation for this year’s harvest season – one they hope will be warm and dry.
The first week of September is the traditional start time for grain harvests in Sturgeon County.
Many farmers have been spraying crops and cleaning their combines in the last few weeks to prepare, said Wayne Groot, who farms potatoes and other grains in northeast Sturgeon County. “We’ve done this all our lives and always gotten the crop off. We’ll do the same thing this year.”
About 90 per cent of the county’s crops are in good to excellent condition right now, said provincial soil moisture technician Ralph Wright. “Generally, the province is doing great.”
That’s due to a near-normal amount of rain over the last few months delivered in regular shots, Wright said, most of which came in around June. “We’re not by any stretch of the imagination way above normal.” Soil moisture levels are at 1-in-6 year lows in some regions, but that’s to be expected, as the crops would have been using most of the water. Moisture levels usually rise post-harvest.
Groot says some parts of his fields were flooded out and useless, but those were balanced out by the hilly bits, which are normally too dry. “We probably had too much rain in spring and June.”
But not everything’s ready to pick yet, noted Tam Andersen of Bon Accord’s Prairie Gardens and Adventure Farm: the cucumbers are still pretty small, and the wheat and barley aren’t quite ready to go. “We definitely need a few more days of frost free to get the crops to mature properly.” The cabbages and kale were doing fantastically, she added, as were other cruciferous vegetables.
Andersen said her pumpkins probably need another month on the vine before they’re ready to become jack-o-lanterns. “Hopefully, we’re not ramping up to a pumpkin shortage this year.” You can get Taber corn now, but local corn probably won’t be ready until the Labour Day weekend.
This last bit of August has been almost perfect harvest weather, Wright said: warm and dry, and big change from the 1-in-6 year lows for temperature the county faced for most of the summer.
The risk now is that of an early frost, he continued. Provincial records suggest that there’s a 10 per cent chance of a killing frost (temperatures below -2 C) in the county before Sept. 10, rising to 25 per cent by Sept. 17. Temperatures of 0 C can happen as early as Aug. 22, but those are usually of short duration.
Farmers will often work 14-hour days come harvest time, Groot said, which can be dangerous. “We have to be methodical about it,” he said, and ensure that all safety procedures are followed. “We can’t go all night every night.”
Statistics Canada predicts this will be another big year for wheat and canola in Alberta. Some 5.2 million tonnes of canola are expected to come off local fields, or about 5.6 per cent more than last year. Although actual acreage harvested will be down a bit, average yield was projected to be about 13 per cent more than last year.
Stats Canada’s latest crop report also projects a record 9.4 million tonne wheat harvest in Alberta this year, one that’s about 12.2 per cent higher than last year’s crop.
A lot of farmers are a bit gun-shy when it comes to this year’s crop, Groot says – last year, what had been pegged as an above-average harvest turned out to be below average.
Still, it was looking pretty good, he said. “We’ll find out when the combines get in the field.”
