Sunny weather earlier this week finally gave Mani toba farmers a chance to put their long-delayed spring seeding plans into action.
“It’s extremely good news,” said Chuck Fossay, who farms near Starbuck just west of Winnipeg.
“It looks like the fields will finally dry up and probably in the next two or three days we’ll see a lot of machinery going onto the fields to get seeding started finally.”
But even with the break in the weather, seeding remains well behind schedule throughout most of Manitoba.
Read Also
Farmers left waiting on rural crime
RCMP say they’re working to curb rural crime on the Prairies, but response time realities and continued reports of incidents remain a frustration for farmers and other residents.
Only an estimated 10 per cent of crops were in the ground at the start of this week. Normally, over 60 per cent of seeding would be done by now, according to the Canadian Wheat Board.
Farther west, farmers in much of Alberta and Saskatchewan have made “substantial progress” in seeding, said Stuart McMillan, a CWB crops and weather analyst.
But producers in most regions of Manitoba will need a week of warm, dry weather before seeding can become general, McMillan said on May 15.
Environment Canada is calling for normal temperatures over the next two weeks. Forecasters were hoping a storm system scheduled to track through the Dakotas by mid-week would remain south of the border.
Fossay was optimistic about making good seeding progress if conditions remained favourable.
“We’ll start on the high fields and, hopefully, by the time we
