Harvest was slow this past week with periodic showers slowing down progress. We didn’t get any large amounts of rain – seems like we are still dealing with shortfalls from what is forecasted – we ended up with around 8-10mm through all the showers that we had last week.
The good news is the barley and oats are now all off. Barley is able to retain its quality on shorter duration rains (even larger amounts but single events), but the succession of rain events over multiple days will hurt the quality as the seed gets exposed to moisture and starts the germination process. When growing barley for malt, if the germination process has started in the field, it is no longer viable for malt barley production.
We haven’t done any wheat yet – that is next on the list as soon as the straw is dry enough to put through the combine. We don’t have much wheat in the ground this year, a couple of days we can get it all done. Then all we would have left is canola.
The grain dryer has once again proven to be the workhorse on the farm – even on a year where yields have been 20-50% of normal, we still ran close to 70% of our barley through the dryer. Without the grain dryer, we would be waiting. As a rule of thumb, one harvest day in August is equivalent to 2 days in September which is equivalent to 3 days in October.
Once again we are fortunate to have an excellent team together – even when dealing with poor crops – sure makes the harvest season go smoothly.
