Seeding Ahead Of Schedule

May 13, 2022

Spring seeding in Alberta is ahead of the 5-year average for this time of year.

According to the first crop report of the new season, most of the seeding is taking place in southern regions of the province, which are still waiting for rain. As of May 3rd, according to the government report, just over 12 percent of seeding was completed across the province. 36.5 percent of that was in southern regions, just under 6 percent in central areas with the rest of the province reporting less than 1 percent completed.

Soil moisture in southern areas of the province is the big factor right now with 31 percent rated poor, 28 percent fair, and 40 percent good. With the lack of moisture and the cool temperatures, there's very little growing in pastures, meaning ranchers still need to depend on feed to keep their cattle fed until there's some green grass in those fields. Some farmers have even started irrigating annual crops in southern Alberta. There was some light snow in areas of western Alberta over the weekend and in the Drumheller area overnight between Sunday and Monday. Despite the cold weather on the weekend, farmers in central Alberta started seeding. One farmer around Legal, north of Edmonton tweeted "It's May 8th,time to get going".

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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