For the week of August 25th – 31st
We managed to get the last of the barley completed on Thursday. Some of the fields were lodged more than we would like to see. We did not spray growth regualtor on any of our barley acres this year – as dry as it was this spring we felt it could have some significant negative impacts to yield with the weather trend at the time…then it started to rain, and staging was too late to apply.
All in the yields were pleasantly surprising, and quality was borderline. We sent all the samples away for analysis – should know more this upcoming week if all the 2-row Synergy and Churchill will be malt quality or not. We intended to go right into our oats, but they are staying green a lot longer than they should. This is with temperatures in the low 30’s all week – it is surprising how long they are staying green. Part of the problem stems back to the dry spring – there were some seeds that got stranded in a dry layer of soil at planting time, and they did not germinate until our first rain on June 8th. In order to speed things up, we decided to swath all the oats – hoping that early this week we will be able to start harvesting them. This will be our second year with a specialty oat market targeted at the baby food market – we need to watch the quality, segregate any uneven parts, and make sure the moisture averages 12% – which may be a challenge this year. We do not want to have to run the oats through the grain dryer if we can manage – we still have 3 big bins of 2-row malt we are currently drying.
We have been preharvesting some of our CPS wheat – about half has now been sprayed. We have sprayed the first of the canola as well – will have to wait for the remainder to get mature enough. If you spray too early – you can reduce yield, seed size and even lock in “green” when the seed is crushed.
This next week looks to be much cooler – with a chance we may slip below the 0C threshold on Tuesday night…while most of our wheat is mature enough that this would have limited damage, we do have a fair bit of canola that is still in a susceptible growth stage. We will be keeping a close eye at Wednesday morning temperatures…the coldest point during the overnight/morning is usually right at sunrise.
