Still no break in the weather. At least we have had some forest fire smoke from the north drift in and that’s been keeping the temperatures moderated the last few days. This is the driest weather we have had in a long time – with 60-75mm of moisture to date since the end of May, this is the driest string of weather we have had in decades. Coupled with the extreme heat, there are many areas of Western Canada that will not even be taking their combines to the field this season.
We are fortunate to at least have something to harvest. We do not know what that will be – if we got rain soon it could still add some bushel weight and plump to the seed, but yield will be severely impacted regardless of rainfall going forwards.
We have purchased some straight-cut headers for our combines, as mentioned prior, this is not something that is common practice in our area due to a large amount of malt barley grown. Straight combining also tends to push harvest back a couple weeks – which also is not desirable at our northern latitude, but this will definitely be a good year to experiment! In some areas, our crop is simply too short and too light to be able to swath. Even though the last thing we wanted to do this year was invest in more equipment, this is a necessary investment.
