'It's stressful': Wet weather has meant fewer harvesting days for P.E.I. farmers

Some Prince Edward Island farmers say the unpredictable weather this fall is making for a frustrating harvest season.

While some crops are already out of the ground, many fields remain to be harvested.

David Mol of Meadowbrook Farms in Winsloe said about 40 per cent of his soybean crop still needs to come off the field, amounting to 200 acres.

"It's not time to panic but it's time to be concerned," Mol told CBC News on Thursday, which was yet another wet day because of an early-morning snowfall.

Soybeans can usually withstand harsh weather, he said, but this fall has brought too much rain — meaning a lot of his crops haven't had time to dry out.

His family has owned and operated the farm since the 1960s. In recent years, he said it's become harder to predict the weather.

"You get more disappointments than you used to," he said.

This spring, Mol bought as much crop insurance coverage as he could. "I don't usually. So far, I'm glad that I did."

In all the decades his family has farmed the land, this is only the second time they've had to destroy a winter wheat crop. "That was all related to wet conditions."

Alan Miller, who farms about 400 acres of grain and oil seeds in Elmwood, said he still has a number of fields left to clear too.

The soybean harvest is far behind where it should be Island-wide, he said.

"The harvest is going very, very slow. For soybeans, we have probably about 50 per cent of 40,000 acres harvested on P.E.I.," he said.

"In a normal — whatever normal is now — in a normal year, we would probably be 95 to 99 per cent finished by Halloween."

Grain farmers have been battling poor conditions all year, he said, as humidity and heat threatened crops with disease outbreaks over the summer. A rainy fall then made good harvesting days few and far between.