Another day of delay had farmers on the move near Garrison today trucking grain to the elevator but not nearly as much as previous years.

(Chris Gratton, Garrison Farmers Union Elevator Manager) "We probably only had three or four good harvest days as where I would call it where we had trucks in line and things were happening. It's a steady flow but it's not.. it's, it's probably about 40 percent of what our harvest should be so far."


Garrison Farmers Union Elevator Manager Chris Gratton says the only way to classify this growing season is one of drought.

He says the crop was able to get growing this spring with some rain but after that the clouds dried up... and when moisture did fall if fell in the form of Golf ball to baseball size hail.

(Chris Gratton, Garrison Farmers Union Elevator Manager) "It looked good, dried out again and then we got four nights of hail pretty much took a good chunk of our crop."


Gratton says yields are coming in extremely low but if there is one bright spot the protein in the wheat is climbing into the premium column.

(Chris Gratton, Garrison Farmers Union Elevator Manager) "We're running some nice proteins in our spring wheat, some good test weights. durum's looking good with low damage, nice color but a lot of the farmers are saying 10 to 12 bushel yields I mean some are a lot lower too."


With fewer bushels coming off the field much of it is heading right into the bin and Gratton expects most producers are holding on and waiting for the harvest price slump to subside and looking ahead to a late fall or early winter price rally.

The late harvest has yet to kick in but already the worry about weather is already shifting to an early frost and and early end to a the growing season for crops like Corn.

(Chris Gratton, Garrison Farmers Union Elevator Manager) "You know it was just about freezing last night, we had some frost in the area so if we freeze out the corn it's probably three weeks too early for that."


It's not the best season, in fact it's not a good season by any means but Gratton says there's always next season and hope for farmers in the Garrison area that they could be just a winter away from their next bumper crop.

Here's Hoping

Near Garrison with Your Eye On Agriculture, Shaun Sipma KX News. watch the video | save this article / add to your favorites list