Harvest for many areas of Saskatchewan may still be one to two weeks, or more, away, but farmers are preparing for when the time comes.
Jake Leguee farms in the Fillmore area in southeast Saskatchewan.
He desiccated lentils two days ago and believes they could start harvesting them by next week.
The other crops might need an additional week before they're ready, he said.
"It kind of depends a little bit on what happens over the next few days, though, as far as if we get some rain, that might set things back." Leguee said.
He described the conditions this season thus far as "interesting" with a cold, dry and windy May, then rain for most of June and a hot July.
"So it's really difficult to know what the crop is going to be like," he said. "I thought we would be dealing with a lot of disease issues this year with how June was shaping up, but with the heat and the dry weather, it seems like most of that is probably not going to be a major factor, except, of course, in the lentils where the damage was done during that June wet period between root diseases and other types of diseases."
On Wednesday morning, he was pre-harvesting some lentils as two of his fields were "mostly weeds".
"So we have to do some pre-harvesting rather than desiccating there, meaning we're killing the weeds, not so much worrying about the crop. "
While convinced the lentil crop won't be good this year, Leguee said it's hard to say what the other crops will be like until they get into the field.
Meanwhile in the Rural Municipality of Vanscoy, near Saskatoon, there has been some harvest activity, according to Leonard Junop, Reeve of the R.M.
"Peas and lentils are just starting to come off, and rye is in the early stages too, but you give it a week, ten days, there's going to be a lot more combining happening." he said.
The Vanscoy area hasn't received much rain lately, but the area did start the season with a lot of rain, he said.
"There are some very nice crops in the country. Pastures did okay, hay crops were good, but like there hasn't been any basically new growth in the last, really, a month now."
The dry conditions led the R.M. to inform people in the area of a fire ban that will take effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday.
The recent heat will impact crop yields, particularly in later-seeded canola and some cereals, he believes, adding they've had some cool mornings this month and that makes him concerned about the possibility of a hard frost.
"We don't want to see frost for another month yet, but like if we could go even a couple of more weeks, it will help big-time." Junop said.
He admits insects have been an issue, such as Bertha army worms in canola fields, and some aphids, but grasshoppers weren't an issue this year.
Despite it all, Junop believes crops in the area will yield well.
"There's actually some very nice cereal crops in our country and like they're, I would say, well above average, and there's some good canola crop too, but there's the odd one that's late, and of course depending on the land type too, that affects it big-time. The heavier land holds on way longer and better than the lighter land, and it's in a year like this that you can definitely see the difference."
Harvest is underway mostly in the southwest region, where five per cent of harvest progress has been completed according to last week's provincial crop report.
(With files from Neil Billinger, CJWW)
