FALHER, Alta. – This year he knew harvest wasn’t going to be gentle.
But Rick Minarovich has discovered bringing in a crop sometimes requires the bulldozer approach.
“When you bust through it’s hard to get out,” said Minarovich, whose two combines are fitted with four-wheel drive kits and waddle along the fields with 112 centimetre front tires and 71 cm back tires. “We’re still having a hard time. You just have to fight with it.”
Not only are swathed crops here soaked, but fields are too waterlogged to support machinery without four-wheel drive.
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Minarovich is one of the lucky ones. Many Peace River country farmers don’t have four-wheel drive combines and all the local kits are sold out. They can only stand and wait for fields to dry.
Most only feed wheat
For the past six weeks, rain, snow and frosts have turned an excellent wheat crop into a swathed disaster. Little was harvested before the September rain and now the luckiest wheat farmers are bringing in red spring wheat graded No. 3. Most have watched their crop degrade to feed.
Alberta Wheat Pool estimates half the region’s wheat crop will grade feed. Last year 50 to 60 percent of malting barley crops were selected, compared to 10 percent estimated this year.
On a rare warm, dry afternoon last week, Owen Hodges augered his No. 3 red spring wheat around, trying to keep it in condition.
With much of his crop in the bin, he was better off than many neighbors and was able to talk philosophically about his disappointment. “It would have been a good crop,” he said. “Oh well, next year.”
Many farmers aren’t sure if they’ll be able to get the crop in before November and the heavy snowfalls it often brings to this northern Alberta region. That leaves Peace farmers with only about two weeks, if snow comes in early November.
Minarovich, who spent $16,500 on the four-wheel drive kit for one of his combines and about $25,000 on tires and rims, said he didn’t feel he had any choice.
“You have to get it off. You have to try your best,” he said. “You can’t just sit back and wait. You’ve got to get out there and steal what you can.”
