Lowe farm area farmer, Dean Harder, is hoping the snow that fell this week won't stick around.

Harder says harvest wrapped up on his farm about a month ago and he was busy with fall fieldwork until few inches of the white stuff fell on Tuesday. Flurries are back in the forecast for today.

"We're going to even try doing some harrowing today even with the snow on the ground because there's still a bunch of fall prep that we haven't got done," he said in an interview Wednesday.

Harder added soil conditions are drier than he'd like, noting his crews broke a few shanks applying anhydrous this fall, but on the flip side he said they were able to get the scraper down into the ditches better than in recent years.

Overall, he says crop quality and yield were a mixed bag this year.

"We'd have the same crop five to ten miles apart and it'd be a dramatic difference in yield based on a variety of reasons, probably mainly moisture but some areas got hit by grasshoppers and then we had a really great crop in an area that saw a lot of moisture. That area we were pumping out the ditches there was so much water," explained Harder.

Larry Neumann farms in the Emerson area and he agrees, the snow came a little earlier than anticipated, and while he says the moisture is needed, the white stuff could have stayed away for a few more weeks.

"We got all of the tillage done that we wanted to do. We were just about to get started with the fall fertilizer program but the weather didn't co-operate for us on that end," he explained.

Meantime, harvest on Neumann's farm wrapped up about three weeks ago and he says overall, yields were fair.

"We tried field peas again this year and they didn't do very well. Too much moisture. But the cereals and the canola, it was good, it wasn't a real exceptional bumper crop but it was a pretty fair yield all the way around."

According to Manitoba Agriculture, total harvest progress in the province sits at 98 per cent complete. That's two weeks ahead of normal.

 

Corn is at 76 per cent, while sunflowers are at 81. Most other crops are wrapped up. Three per cent of soybeans remain unharvested.