Sask. farmer says strong winds causing minor annoyances but rain is what’s needed

Wind isn’t anything new for Saskatchewan farmers, but it still becomes an annoyance when it interferes with work on the farm.

Jake Leguee farms around Fillmore and will be growing canola, durum, spring wheat, lentils and peas.

While he finished seeding on Saturday, the wind is forcing him to put a pause on certain things out in the field.

“If it’s extremely dry and windy, you might consider shutting down for a day, but when you get so much wind day after day, you just can’t wait. We’ve got good sub-soil moisture so it really just strips the top-soil moisture out,” Leguee said.

“The biggest problem with this kind of wind is that you just can’t get any spraying done. The weeds are growing (and) we’ve got to be able to kill them.”

Not only has the wind put a stop to spraying for Leguee, he said it’s also affecting the moisture of the soil which was already at a premium. While areas like Regina got some rain on Tuesday, Leguee said all they got in his area was the wind from that system.

“It has been stripping the moisture out of the top soil, so the last 20 per cent that we put in the ground, we’re just not going to get much for germination until we can get rain,” Leguee said.

“We hardly had any moisture in May. It has been the fifth year in a row that we’ve had a hard time getting anything for moisture in May so it made for a long run. We’re done but we’re still waiting for that rain.”

While the wind doesn’t have much of an effect on seeding and other things out on the farm, he admits it can be annoying working outside in constant contact with the wind.

“It makes working outside miserable and we’ve got a lot of work to do outside and it makes it impossible to spray. What we need more than anything else is even a half-inch of rain. It’s not dire, not yet. It’s still May, we’ve got lots of time to get this crop out of the ground,” Leguee said.

“It just wears you out. You’re out there getting blasted with it all day and blasted with dirt and everything else. It just makes working outside miserable.”

He said about half the days in May have had a wind of more than 30 kilometres per hour so far.