North Idaho drought harvest underway

Troy--A baler kicks up dust in 100-degree temps, this is the dire situation North Idaho farmers face this summer.  

Travis Port,  is now in the second week of a triple-digit heatwave…he’s baling winter peas,  He had to bale it because of the extreme drought conditions, normally they wouldn’t harvest for another 6 weeks:

“My projected yield on this is going to be 200 pounds per acre, our average yield is upwards of two-thousand, in our farm in Idaho we just got through with our hay harvest, and it was about half our normal yield

Port says so far the first harvest is just a third of normal on his two-State operation, he says Timothy hay is better.

“Thank god for this year that we had a decent hay crop, two tons of very excellent quality hay. If I didn’t have the hay this year, Id be in a very terrible way, all the rest of my crops will be half as normal or less,” said Port.

The first wheat harvests in the north will start soon,  Stressed wheat plants stop making grain and that will reduce kernels making them lighter. There’ll be a harvest but projections so far are three-quarters of normal, but until the trucks roll across the scales, no one knows.

For the Voice of Idaho Ag, I'm Jake Putnam