Alberta farmers have been taking advantage of the warm, sunny weather as they look to bring in this year's crop.
Josh Lubach farms around 4,000 acres just north of Ponoka. He says they have about 40 per cent of the crop in the bin. All of the barley is off and they're now working on wheat and starting to dip into a little bit of canola.
"We're definitely ahead of schedule so far," remarked Lubach. "Normally we start the first week of September. We were definitely about a week early this time. The stuff dried out a little bit. Little bit of lack of rain through the middle of the growing season. Little bit of an earlier start."
Lubach expects to make good progress this week with the sunny, hot weather in the forecast.
"Yields are looking quite variable," he stated. "It's fairly poor on some light soil and it really depends where the showers went. Some of the crops are looking quite good. I would say overall we're probably in the 50 to 60 per cent of normal. Barley is roughly in the 70 to 75 bushel mark and wheat probably in 50 to 55 bushel mark from what we've seen so far."
Lubach says the quality of the crop seems pretty good, adding when yields are lower the protein seems to be higher.
Insects were not much of an issue this year according to Lubach. He says they had plenty of moisture early on in the season but showers were lacking for the whole month of July which caused the crops to dry out.