EBENEZER, Sask. – While his neighbors were steadily seeding, Lorne Fandrey was out in his boat, trawling a lake looking for the big catch.
When he found it, he had to wade into the water, tie it to a chain and drag the packers out from under more than a metre of water that covered almost half a section of land.
“I just couldn’t find it (until now),” he said about losing the packers and other equipment under water. He had better luck with a discer he had left on the same quarter section last fall. The top of it could be seen above the surface of the newly formed lake.
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Fandrey reckons he has lost 80 to 90 acres of good cropland and a large hay meadow to the water, which backed up from a road during the spring floods.
From the top of a fertilizer tower in Ebenezer in east-central Saskatchewan, Fandrey’s predicament appears unusual, but certainly not unique.
Most fields in this area north of Yorkton are now mainly dry, with a great deal of work going on, but pools of water and dark, wet patches are visible in a sizable minority of fields.
Heavy spring floods had many local producers worried they couldn’t seed before crop insurance deadlines and before the risk of fall frosts became too great, but a good week of sunny, hot weather baked the wet land to the point where most could be hastily seeded.
More to seed
About two kilometres south of the Fandrey farm, the Burkells were having more success, although they had an imposing task ahead. They had been working their land for about a week, but still had 900 acres to seed.
On one field the effects of the wet conditions and late seeding have come into play.
“Scott was going to seed flax on this quarter, but it’s too late,” said Craig Burkell about his nephew. Instead of flax, they seeded oats and barley.
The Burkells were about 10 days behind schedule on seeding, which means “we can go another week probably with oats and early maturing barley or early canola, but she’s getting a little scary for wheat or peas.”
Last week, the fields around them hummed with activity as farmers rushed to take advantage of good weather.
The power of the sun to dry soaking wet land in very few hours was a popular topic at the Ebenezer fertilizer facility..
“You take places that were wet last week – you could go right through them today,” said Albert Effa, an older Springside-area farmer.
Effa was relaxed and confident local crops would develop, but he said some local producers had been less enthused.
“For the younger fellows, it’s a stress because they’ve got a big debt load and they’re depending on” a good crop to pay their bills, he said.
Excellent growing conditions during the last week means those who were able to seed could be on the way to a good crop, fertilizer agent Stan Shymanski said.
One of his customers said “his flax was up in four days. Last year for two and a half weeks it just lay there.”
Back on the Fandrey farm, work on dry land was going well. Some canola seeded next to the unplanned lake was already sprouting and conditions were good for seeding the rest.
And if losing almost half a section of land bothers Fandrey, he didn’t show it as he laughed at the absurdity of being able to sail across his land in a boat.
