Harvesting for the hungry
- Details
- Published on Thursday, August 25, 2016
Submitted photo. Volunteers were working into the night to get the Whitemud Growing Project’s fall rye combined.
By Kira Paterson
Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press
The Whitemud Growing Project has officially started harvesting. The project is a grassroots fundraising endeavour to raise money for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank to help the hungry overseas. The project is run by a committee of farmers from the Neepawa, Arden, Plumas and Gladstone areas and involves volunteer companies and farmers who want to help with the project’s crops or donate some of their own crops.
Over two days – Saturday, Aug. 13 and Tuesday, Aug. 16 – the farmers and volunteers were out in the field combining the project’s 170 acres of fall rye. Several groups and companies helped out with the harvest this year, including Rocky Mountain Equipment, Odessa Colony of Arden, R&S Farms of Arden, Renegade Transport of Plumas and Charles Doell of Gladstone. The field preparations and seeding were done by A&F Farms of Plumas and the herbicide was applied by Neepawa-Gladstone Co-op.
There have also been a few colony farms that have committed to donating portions of their crops to add to what the group gets from the project’s two fields. Springhill colony has already delivered their crop and the money from that is in the fund now.
The farmers estimated a yield between 75 and 80 bushels per acre, which is excellent. A fairly good yield for fall rye is between 55 and 60 bushels per acre, so it’s been a really good year for them.
The project also has 140 acres of canola, which will be harvested in about a month’s time. Once the canola is off the field, the project committee, consisting of Roland Unger, Charles Doell, Jeff Harder and Jake Hamm, will have a better idea of how much money they will make off the crops to donate to Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
The committee is still looking for volunteers to help with the canola harvest, so anyone interested can contact Unger at 204-476-6024, Doell at 204-856-6621, Harder at 204-476-0631 or Hamm at 204-570-2446 to offer equipment, time, or proceeds from a portion of their own crop.
