It’s been 17 days since Adrian Hamoline has been able to work in the field.
The Aberdeen farmer is trying to keep busy, despite recent weather delaying harvest operations.
“We went from early harvest with good quality, that could be dragged out to who knows how long, and we don’t know what the quality is anymore,” Hamoline said.
Hamoline runs a 15,000 acre family farm, growing wheat and canola.
Too much moisture at the wrong time of the year has been a challenge, he said.
“This year has been dry all the way through. The most precipitation we got was a big hail storm in July and that kind of put a damper on things.”
The aftermath of recent frost and rain has formed pools of water on his property.
Roughly 60 per cent of Hamoline’s crop is now in the bin, which wheat and canola experts say is above average for this time of year.
Farmers in Northern Saskatchewan are taking the biggest hit.
According to the latest crop report, the Northwest region has combined 17 per cent of crops.
“It was really patchy this year. We didn’t have a lot of the two and three-day rains across the entire province to kind of soak and reset everything. We had little thunderstorms where you got a lot of rain or not a lot and that may only be a few miles apart,” said Ian Epp, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada.
While it’s hard to predict how the weather has affected the quality of Hamoline’s crops and bottom line, the moisture will most likely downgrade his wheat in colour and protein, he said.
Hamoline is hopeful and looking forward to October, as there’s still opportunity for good weather to finish combining.
