I’ve heard it called a poor man’s crop, a niche market, prehistoric and a weed. Fall rye brings out strong feelings in some farmers and is completely off the radar of others. With unseeded and now flooded acres across the Prairies, there might be a fit for fall rye in some crop rotations. Penny-pinching crop […] Read more
Rye, oh rye?
Got the unseeded acre blues? Consider this fall cereal
Filling a niche of our own
Our grain industry is evolving into a collection of small buyers, each looking for a specific product that will meet their specialized needs
We grow fall rye on our farm, which is not a common crop in our area. To make things even more interesting, we grow older varieties that are long-legged and prone to lodging and probably aren’t as high yielding as the newer semi-dwarf varieties. Are we ill-informed? Stuck in our ways? Suckers for punishment? Hopefully […] Read more
Putting the farm “on trial”
Farmers are always experimenting. Here are Sarah Weigum’s thoughts about different ways of doing research
Last summer I travelled to Indian Head, Sask. where I had the pleasure of visiting the Bell Farm historical site. The Bell Farm is probably Canada’s first mega-farm, topping out at 53,000 acres in the late 1800s. In 1887, a portion of this farm was sold to create the Dominion Experimental Farm, now known as […] Read more
Seed, treat, repeat
With a new grain cart and a Storm seed treater, Sarah Weigum’s farm is ready for spring
Hopefully by the time you read this our grain cart is ready to go. Typically, farmers give their tractors, sprayers and seeding equipment a final tune up this time of year, and we’re doing that too; however, we also finished modifying a 1,000-bushel grain cart that will be pressed into service for seed distribution any […] Read more
Getting to the root of the rot
Late season root rot is creeping into pea fields. Sarah Weigum investigates the symptoms, and the situation
It sounds a bit dramatic, but the late season root rot that is creeping into Prairie producers’ pea fields feels like a betrayal. Besides being a profitable to grow, peas seemed like the “right thing to do.” I tend to feel smug when I hear of clubroot in a distant county, because I assume growers […] Read more
Fababean update
Seed grower Sarah Weigum’s first time seeding and spraying fababeans taught her a lot of lessons. She’s willing to share
In the April issue of Grainews I wrote about a new adventure on our seed farm — growing fababeans. Now it’s the first week of July and the beans have begun to flower. We picked up our fababean seed from Benci’s Seed Farm on April 30. Ideally we would have planted them before then, but […] Read moreThe best defence is the right depth
Avoid disease and delayed emergence by choosing the right depth and following these five steps to uniformity
If agronomist Doug Moisey doesn’t see any canola seed on the ground when inspecting a freshly sown field he worries. This might seem like an unconventional cause for concern, but as Moisey explains, “In normal seeding you’ll get some seeds bounce out of the furrow and that’s fine.” If no seeds are visible on the […] Read moreFababean first timer
An Alberta seed grower explains the research that goes into choosing to grow a new crop on her farm
Some people have a natural proclivity to soak up and process new information. For me, however, an onslaught of new information is more like a heavy Alberta rain on a dry ground — a lot more runs off than is absorbed. This was the case when I heard Bentley-area producer Harvey Brink talk about growing […] Read moreA solid step in durum breeding
A new durum variety raises the bar for Prairie farmers and makes life a lot more challenging for one of their common nemeses — sawflies. AAC Raymore, released by SeCan to all its member seed growers in February 2013, is an amber durum (CWAD) with similar yield, quality and agronomic traits to AC Strongfield, but […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
