They live in two different provinces, separated by 600 kilometres of prairie farmland.
But as far as their 1999 crop is concerned, Ken Qually and Lloyd Claypool might as well be living on two different planets.
Last week, Qually finished harvesting on his farm at Starbuck, Man., just east of Winnipeg, bringing in the earliest and the biggest yielding crop he’s ever grown.
“It’s not very often I’m done at this time of year,” he said in an interview Sept. 2, adding that he’ll have no trouble making it down to the Big Iron farm equipment show in Fargo, North Dakota, in mid-September.
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“We’ve already booked the rooms,” he said with a laugh.
There’s not much to laugh about at Claypool’s farm at Kayville, Sask., about an hour’s drive south of Regina.
He can only sit and wait for his crop to ripen, all the while keeping an anxious eye on the skies and the thermometer.
“We’re at a standstill,” Claypool said that same day. “We need a good five weeks to get everything off.”
A wet spring meant he didn’t get his last field seeded until June 16, by far the latest date he’s ever put in a crop.
He said half of his 600 acres should be ready to cut this week and combine next week. Those are the acres he managed to seed before the rains came.
But he figures it will be another two weeks after that before the later-seeded fields are ready for harvest.
“It’s really nerve-wracking,” said Claypool, noting that the temperature had dipped to
3 C, just above freezing the previous night. “If we get much of a frost, I think the crop is history.”
It’s a good-looking crop and should yield about 35 bushels an acre. The challenge will be to get it safely into the bins in good condition.
With his crop in two stages of maturity, it’s even hard for Claypool to know what kind of weather to hope for. The early crop needs hot, dry weather to speed ripening, while the late-seeded crop still needs rain.
“Today it’s cool and cloudy, so I don’t like that very much,” he said.
Farther east, it has been a storybook year for Qually.
He finished seeding on May 2 and it rained the next day. The rest of the growing season was marked by a weekly rain, followed by a couple of hot days and a couple of cool days: “It was just like being on irrigation.”
The resulting crop left Qually groping for words.
“It’s the best year I’ve ever had for yield,” he said. “It’s an unbelievable crop. Unbelievable.”
His spring wheat averaged 65 bu. an acre, his oats 135 bu., his canola 45 bu. and his flaxseed 28 bu.
The only downside is quality. Those regular rains that produced such a high yield continued on through harvest, meaning most of his wheat will grade No. 2 or No. 3 CW. And the high yields will also result in low protein levels.
And of course, no matter whether they produce 65 bu. per acre or 30 or 15, all prairie grain growers will have to cope with low prices and cash flow problems this fall and winter.
