Wheat cutting moves fast as mercury climbs

    Thanks to the current heat wave, one estimate puts the area wheat harvest between 75-80% complete after a later start this season.
    Travis Kester, grain department manager at FV Coop, said the harvest really peaked over the weekend and was moving fast this week.
    He believes this year’s harvest is one to two weeks behind the normal start.
    However, the crop looks good, he said, with weights acceptable and protein content at the sub-12 level. He said yields have been average, but sporadic, throughout the area.
    “With the lack of moisture last fall it was looking rough” for the crop, Kester said on Monday.
    But timely rains the first of May that continued into June allowed the crop to catch up, he said, even as the rain and cool days until earlier this month put it behind a normal year’s schedule.
    But the recent heat has really moved it along.
    “It finally dried off and away we went,” he said.
    Hail wasn’t near the factor it was in 2022, which some estimates last year believed put a 30-50% drag on yields.
    Kester said area fields this year were affected by storms and were dinged with small hail, but effect on yields in most cases was minimal. A hailstorm about a month ago in the Trenton and Stratton areas did much more damage, he noted.