The east central region of Saskatchewan has seen 82% of their crop enter the bin, which is 8% lass than the provincial rate at 90%, and is worst in the province.
In that region, farmers in the Quill Lakes area have had to deal with water on their fields, or in some areas, drought until June.
Quill Lakes area farmer Dwight Odelein said producers in the area are hoping conditions improve in order to return to harvest.
“There might be some flax come off after this, it’s hard to imagine anything else,” Odelein said. “I’d say we got about two inches of wet snow, so there’s going to be a fair amount of moisture in that, even if it does melt right away.”
Odelein said flax and canola are left out in the field, with much of the canola not developing quick enough.
“Some of it was delayed emergence because of late rains, so I think some of it just literally didn’t get ready.”
Odelein said with their recent snow, it could cause issues for too much soil moisture in the fields.
“It has receded some, (but) time will tell,” Odelein said. “You get into the middle of June, we were in drought, then all of a sudden it starts to rain again, so who knows what can happen.”
Odelein adds there’s a strong belief there was actually a channel that connected the Quill Lakes to last Mountain Lake years ago, but since dried up and was shored up by erosion and man-made dams, and if that was still available, there would not have been any impact to farmers or Last Mountain Lake residents.
