Can there be too much of a good thing? Local farmers emphatically say “Yes” after the downpour of rain the area has received.
June is wheat harvest time, and it usually is the most important time of the year for wheat farmers who often will work into the wee hours of the night to get out their crop in a timely manner. Most years, a deluge of seven inches would be devastating for wheat harvesters, but it is not the torrential rain which ruined the crop this year.
“We already lost the wheat because of the drought,” Kenton Javorsky said. Javorsky lives in Weatherford and farms the same land near Bessie his family began farming more than 100 years ago.
“My great grandfather came over in one of the several exoduses of Mennonites from the Russia area,” Javorsky said. “He actually came from Ukraine and left because of religious persecution. He came here and harvested Hard Red Winter Wheat. The Mennonites brought the wheat here with them from Russia because it would do well in this climate of little rainfall and fairly extreme summers.”
Javorsky still harvests varieties of that same kind of wheat, but the conditions this year proved too much, even for the tenacious wheat. Like many other farmers, Javorsky has little to harvest compared to what for this year’s crop, and the results left him disappointed. “It was 51 pounds per bushel on Monday,” Javorsky said. “It needs to be 60 pounds.” The nine-pound difference indicates low-quality wheat, and local farmers are feeling the effects of a poor crop.
The rain from earlier this week will keep farmers out of their fields until Monday or Tuesday, but it is the cotton which may suffer the most from the downpour. “I’m not sure if my cotton will make it,” Javorsky said. “It has some disease from the cool temperatures and the wet.”
After describing the severity of the situation, Javorsky said, “Crop insurance is what will keep farmers going. Without it, things would be pretty bleak.”
Even with the turbulence of agriculture, Javorsky still loves wheat harvest. For him and many other farmers, this is the best time of the year. “This is what you work all year for,” he said. “This is the pay day. Not only that, but it’s also a family thing. As a family, we’re out there, getting it out together.”