YELLOW GRASS, Sask. – They have little crop and face delays in harvesting what they have, but farmers are working hard in the areas of Manitoba and Saskatchewan that were flooded this spring.
They are spraying, mowing, cultivating, swathing, raking, baling, plowing, combining and burning.
And that’s just the fight against weeds.
Most of the floodwater has disappeared and waist-high colorful weeds dot the fields or stretch toward the horizon in southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan.
Many weeds have gone to seed as they have taken over fields too wet to work. Wild oats, foxtail, kochia, thistle and buckwheat are thriving. Fireweed, cattails and various unfamiliar water weeds have also taken hold.
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Some farmers found spraying ineffective this spring. Others gave up when even high-clearance sprayers got stuck in saturated soil.
Some are still discovering areas of crusted soil. Sink through that, and mud splashes out.
Some have begun to reclaim old cultivators or have bought new ones for the fight. Some have bought mowers or are renting them for as much as $400 per day. Others use their combines to mow down weeds, emptying hopper loads of seeds into piles that are then burned.
“A combine is like a 30-foot lawnmower,” said Lorne McClinton, who farms near Yellow Grass, Sask.
More than 51 centimetres of rain fell there this year. Add that to 46 cm last year, and a heavy snowfall last winter, and seeding was restricted to about 10 percent in his area.
McClinton considers himself lucky. He was able to buy a 4.5-metre mower this spring. He’s finally getting on his 1,135 acres of summerfallow that have become a thick mess of tall weeds harboring deer, coyotes, and thousands of frogs.
Normally, summerfallow would occupy only 10 to 15 acres of his 1,235 acre land base and he would be busy harvesting now. With only 100 acres planted this year to durum and lentils, and crops two or three weeks behind schedule, McClinton and his spouse Angie Jansen are fighting weeds instead.
In a 12-hour day, 40 to 60 acres might get mowed. It depends how often the tractor overheats from all the weed seeds.
Some cattle producers are approaching farmers in the area and asking them to bale wild oats.
Feed needed
They’re scrambling to find enough feed for their livestock. The hay is still under water.
Farther south, near Carievale, Sask., David Thompson cultivated his fields a second time in late August. Normally, this would be his fourth time around.
“The degree of weed problem? On a scale of one to 10, it’s an eight,” he said.
Tom Cameron, who also farms around Carievale, managed to spray his weeds recently after lifting the sprayer as high as he could and avoiding the wet spots. He plans to cultivate later.
“We lost all the ground we made in the last 20 years in the (weed) seed bank,” said Cameron. “We’ll end up paying another $8 or $9 an acre in chemical that we wouldn’t normally do.”
There are also questions about the effect of tilling fields that have been zero-tilled for several years.
“We don’t know what will happen,” said McClinton. “Time will tell.”
While the fields are slowly drying, another concern has arisen.
With a large number of fields forced into summerfallow, a dry winter could lead to dust storms and loss of topsoil on the southern Prairies.
