The current weather in Mountain View County is making for a good harvest season, say area agriculture officials.ìThis warm, sunny weather is just perfect for harvest,î said Bill Sheehan, chair of the county's Ag Services Board.ìWe've had very little dew at night, warm wind and sun ñ it's exactly what we need,î Sheehan said.Compared to the last few years, yields in the Mountain View County area are above average, Sheehan added.Swathing is about 80 per cent complete, and combining is almost a third of the way complete at 30 per cent, he said.That means a substantial amount of swathing has been completed in two weeks' time, as an Alberta Crop Report from Sept. 8 pegged the Central Region (which includes Mountain View and Red Deer counties) at 12 per cent of crops combined and 23 per cent swathed.Although the province is a little behind (it's usually 25 to 30 per cent completed harvest at the beginning of the month), it is slowly catching up, says the reports.ìSome areas are more, and some are less, but the rainy weather a week ago held some of us up a bit,î Sheehan said.The cold, wet weather the county has experienced the last few weeks, combined with the hail storms that visited crops this summer, may have contributed to some uneven maturation, said Div. 4 Coun. Bruce Beattie, who serves on the Ag Service Board.ìBut that's farming,î he added with a laugh.ìThere's been frost in the eastern portions of Mountain View County, and a lot that haven't matured evenly, but I think that's been sorted out in the last few weeks,î Beattie said.Beattie said this trend is common in both the canola and barley crops in the Sundre area of MVC.Because the crops have stayed in a little longer than some would like, this means a higher risk for frost damage, Beattie said, and some of this has occurred already.ìThere's a little frost damage, particularly in the canola,î he said.This year's second cut of hay has been excellent, which Sheehan said is rather unusual.In addition to weather-related issues, the only real problems some county crops have experienced this year are cases of wheat midge and lygus bugs, which Sheehan said have been aerial-sprayed in the last month or so.ìIt's a seasonal type of thing, depending on the weather conditions.îInspections for club root have gone excellently, and no cases of club root were found in MVC, he said.ìSo far we're one of the lucky ones. We're also fusarium free,î said Sheehan.Sheehan said some roadside spot-spraying for toad flax and thistles has occurred recently, and roadside mowing in the county is nearly complete.In recent weeks, crop reports from Alberta Agriculture have reported the overall provincial yields to be above their 10-year averages, with a large portion being of good quality.Provincially (as of Sept. 8), 11 per cent of the 2011 crop had been harvested, while less than two per cent had been completed two weeks before that.ìOn the whole the county's harvest outlook is encouraging,î said Jane Fulton, MVC's agricultural services manager.
