Manitoba growers wrap up corn, sunflower harvest

Even with last month’s winter weather, corn and sunflower producers in Manitoba had a strong finish to their 2023 growing season.

Anastasia Kubinec harvested her corn and sunflowers with great yields this fall, and she was lucky enough to have her sunflowers off before the snow came.

She said the warmer weather created some muddy conditions for the corn harvest and they could not get their trucks in the field and relied on their grain carts more often than normal. Moving grain was more strategic.

“If the days got much more above two or three C, the grain cart was even slipping in the field and we were having issues. We never got stuck, but some of the roads that we’re on, dirt roads to get back to the yard, they were completely ripped up.”

Harvesting shortly after the first snowfall, the moisture content in her corn was about 21 percent before freezing rain and high humidity caused that to rise. Closer to the end of the month while they were finishing harvest, Kubinec said moisture was coming down to around 20 percent so their patience paid off.

“There was two weeks there that if you combined you got it off the field but it was just more moisture you had to deal with. Waiting a little bit later, then it did come down, so that was good. We did dry some but we also use natural air and basically we freeze some, too.”