Two weeks ago, when Nick Parsons drove his combine through his barley crop, water oozed out of the ground and moved ahead of the combine in waves.
Behind the combine the water settled in deep ruts.
That was before the latest four centimetres of rain and snow shut harvest down again in British Columbia’s Peace River region.
No doubt the Farmington area between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John is the worst region in the district, but Parsons’ situation is not isolated.
Only about 30 percent of the harvest is combined in the entire B.C. Peace country, estimates Lee Bowd, crop insurance agent with the B.C. agriculture department in Dawson Creek.
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“It’s not good,” said Bowd, who described the situation as soggy.
Because the land is supersaturated, even light showers halt work for days. One farmer north of Dawson Creek is using two four-wheel drive tractors to pull his baler in an attempt to get enough cattle feed. Once the bale is made, the baler often gets too heavy and snaps the cables between the tractors.
“It takes all the fun out of things. There’s an awful lot of discouraged people,” said Bowd.
Harvest unlikely
Parsons thinks it will take a miracle to get the crop off this year. The ideal miracle would be a good hard frost for two weeks, clear sunny days and no snow to allow farmers to get the combines on the field without sinking up to the axles.
They’ve given up thinking about fall work or applying fertilizer.
“It’s so damn hard on the equipment and the operator. There’s so much stress and you get so frustrated inside yourself.”
This is the second year in a row farmers in the area have been unable to harvest because of bad weather. Many ended up burning last year’s crop this spring.
Their plight hasn’t gone unnoticed. Last week, B.C.’s deputy minister of agriculture, Catherine Read, landed in a helicopter at Richard Miller’s yard for a quick tour of the area.
“They were quite sympathetic and surprised how bad things were,” said Miller, of Farmington.
Despite the sympathetic ear, Miller didn’t hear any offers of help for the area.
“We are quite discouraged up here, especially after last year.”
In other parts of the Peace, combining is progressing slowly. Only about 40 percent of the harvest on the Alberta side is finished.
Elaine Stenbraaten, crop specialist in Manning, isn’t optimistic farmers will finish harvest before a major snowfall.
“Things here aren’t good. There is a lot of water and mud.”
There hasn’t been a single week without rain since spring. In some areas, precipitation is 200 percent of normal. On top of that, crops out in the field are getting damaged by wildlife.
