For the week of August 18th to 24th
It was a wild week! We started combining on Tuesday, and all day Wednesday – then a wild night of severe weather kept us up all night watching the radar. A line of storms from Meadow Lake to Moose Jaw swept across the province from the west to east. The storm had heavy downpours, hail the size as golf balls, and strong winds. There was also reports of tornados to the NW of us. THANKFULLY, we escaped with minor damage. We had some hail damage on our farthest north land, and 3mm-12mm of rain across the farm. We managed to get going again on Thursday, but then Friday was another day of showers, fog and cloudy weather. We finished all but a small field of our 6-row Legacy barley the last couple days and started into our 2-row Synergy barley.
Quality – so far as been mixed. The legacy has had higher levels of chit, but for the end user that we have contracted with – chit levels are not a grading factor. Our 2-row Synergy is much more sensitive for quality factors when it comes to chitted levels. For those who don’t know what chitted levels are – that is a test that is able to determine the start of the germination process. The germination levels could still be high, but not stable. One of the biggest grading factors for malt barley is the percentage of germination. They require a minimum of 95% germination – usually not hard to achieve unless we have rain when the seed is mature. Right now we have had multiple rain events, but the seed is not completely mature, so time will tell if quality is still good or not.
This next week looks to be warm / hot, which is exactly what we need. We are hoping to be able to preharvest some canola and CPS wheat by the end of the week. It takes another 7-14 days after preharvesting before you can harvest wheat, and 10-14 days before you can harvest canola. The longer range forecast does not look favorable, but there is lots of time for that to change!
