Small grain, pulse harvest winding down

It is not uncommon to hear the term "mixed bag" when people talk about grain harvest in this area.  The problem we have in Richland County is that we have a fair amount of irrigated acres and a proportionally larger amount of dryland acres.  So when it comes time to evaluate the harvest, you almost have to weigh the two systems against each other to make it fair.  However, this is not usually what people want to know about, they just want to know how the crop did overall.

So, overall, I guess I would surmise that the wheat crop did rather poorly.  I was recently at a meeting to determine whether or not Richland County qualified for USDA disaster status and there were several reports of farmers not even bringing their combines into fields because it wasn't worth using the fuel to even try and harvest the crop.  With all of the stress our wheat crop sustained, protein levels seem to be pretty good but even bonuses for higher protein cannot make up for losses in yield.

Most of the reports of barley yield that I heard early on were fairly good.  However, most of our barley crop is irrigated so the lack of rains should not affect it as much.  Even with the good yields reported, I also heard that there was alot of the crop that did not make malting quality probably due to the extended periods of heat we sustained during the growing season.

Pulse crops more than likely did not fair too well either but I haven't heard any reports of how they did this year.

So, we have the sugarbeet crop, what corn was not harvested for silage, and the safflower crop essentially left before we finish our harvest season.  Hopefully better news will come when these crops come out of the field.

Roosevelt County Irrigation Tour

On Wednesday, August 29, Agri Industries, the Roosevelt County Conservation District , Horizon Resources, Farm Equipment Sales in Culbertson, the Roosevelt County Extension Office, and the Roosevelt County NRCS office will be hosting an irrigation tour.  The actual tour will be held at the Dean Harmon farm, which is about 6.5 miles south of Bainville on County Road 1007. 

Topics and demonstrations for this tour include:

• Irrigation development and evolution- from dry land to flood and pivots

• Multiple pivot system with pressure sensing automatice control valves

• Tail water re-use

• Precision agriculture

•  No-till row crops

• No-till beets into alfalfa

•  Row crops on borders

• Seeding perpendicular to irrigation

• Seedbed preparation with defoliator

• Flood damage and cottonwood regeneration

• Reclaiming poor soils with sulfur-sulfur burner

• Display of seeding and beet equipment and the Conservation District dredge

After the tour has concluded, a free steak dinner will be prepared for all participants to enjoy.  To make it easy for people from our neck of the woods to get to the event, there will be a bus leaving the fairgrounds in Culbertson at 12:30.  For more information and/or details you are welcome to contact either the Roosevelt County Conservation District at 787-5232 or the Roosevelt County Extension Office at 787-5312.