Wind plays havoc with farm fields

Farmers in Westman were forced to hunker down on Thursday amid the regional dust storm that damaged properties and affected farm fields.

Jake Ayre, a farmer near Minto, told the Sun that the wind caused issues with crops and electricity, delayed some work around the farm and amassed top soil in the area.

“Some of the ditches on roads around us are quite literally full of soil, and you don’t really know where it came from,” Ayre said in a phone interview Friday.

He added that high-speed winds combined with dirt cut off the tops of roughly six acres of winter wheat.

The wind also led to a loss of power at his property for about 24 hours, so that he was unable to pump fuel into his tractors for seeding, harrowing, fertilizing and rock-picking work, he said.

While the Thursday wind was disruptive, it’s part of the job, he said.

“Just kind of par for the course in farming, having to adjust and adapt and overcome, really.”

Michael Decock, a cattle producer in Deleau, told the Sun that shingles blew off the roof of his farm house, leading him to get up on the structure during the storm.

Decock took a loader and collected tires on the property, then lugged them onto the roof to weigh down shingles that had broken loose, he said.

The farmer said he filed an insurance claim for the damage to his house and planned to tar shingles on his roof as soon as possible to avoid rain leakage into the home.

His herd of roughly 230 cattle and their calves was able to take shelter with access to trees, he said — but the weather delayed health care for some animals. A few sick calves couldn’t be treated because of the windstorm, which made it difficult for him to round them up.

Decock said he was waiting for the weather to clear up to treat the calves as fast as humanly possible.

Souris-area farmer Curtis Gerow told the Sun he retreated inside for the day and worked on equipment because of the wind.

Topsoil and dirt was blowing off fields at high speeds in the rural area to the west of Souris, he said.

“It was just miserable. My eyes felt like they were sandblasted,” Gerow said in a phone interview. “The neighbour’s was blowing so bad, there was zero visibility if you were driving near the field. A lot of topsoil lost there.”

Gerow said his farm was not heavily impacted the same way because he practises no-till farming and the soil sticks to the ground more as a result.

When top soil is lost, the wind can sometimes blow down low enough to move seeds that had recently been planted, leading farmers to have to reseed, Gerow said. He added that sand and dust blowing at high speeds can cut off plants at the ground and kill them.

Trevor Atchison, a Deleau-area farmer, said that his fenceline was hit by trees that blew down in the wind, and that hydro wires arced and burned limbs off trees around his property, but there were no fires. He added that some tin will need to be screwed back down after coming loose on older buildings in his yard.

Atchison said his crop fields were impacted by some top soil loss, but it won’t impact his farming plans for the year. Neighbouring properties in the area were blown heavily, he said.

“I know there was other fields around that, just because of the conditions they were in — they had been worked for seeding — there was some significant blowing on those.”

Atchison said he will take a chainsaw out to his fields in the next two weeks, cut down the fallen trees on his fenceline and repair the fence wires. The farm was “relatively unscathed,” and the cattle were fine with it due to the warmer weather, he said.

“Just adds another job on the to-do list.”

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com