Just to update those who are having too much moisture this summer on what's happening to us with too little.

We're a dryland grass hay area (no irrigation - single cutting) and we harvested ~ 30% of normal production this year. In addition and also due to the drought, hayfields were over run with a winter annual grass weed, ventenata, similar to cheatgrass. No leaf, no value, no good. Fire hazard.

Throw in no pasture left due to no rain and a heck of a crop of grasshoppers due to mild winter and it's been a doozy.

Starting to get some reports back on the wheat,barley, peas, lentils, garbanzo harvest (started 2 weeks earlier than normal). Everything sounds like it's way down and pinched (low test wgt) except maybe winter wheat. Oh - and prices are way down too.

I tried an acre of beardless barley hay and it did okay under the circumstances but I'm sure it can yield much better with some moisture. Thinking of tearing out some of my weedy hay fields and planting it as a chance to clean up that ventanata (doesn't like tillage much).

Hope you all are getting by and having more luck than we had this year. Hay will be tight since we're already starting to feed it now instead of September.

Good to hear from you, Geoff. Well here in NW Missouri, we are just having the opposite challenges, way too much moisture resulting in some crops doing really well ( potatoes and hay for example) and others not doing so well ( tomatoes and peppers ).

The good news is there is a surplus of hay in my area and it is going cheap.

Hope you get some rain in northern Idaho, eastern Washington and western Montana. That area is in a bad way.

Wyoming is dry! We had an abundance of rain in May and part of June, more than average, for sure. But nothing since. Thermopolis, is dry. Course, this is normal for this time of year, but with the rain so abundant in the spring, we got spoiled. First cutting of hay was good.

our last rain was 14 days ago we could use some more. we are not as bad as some of you we can make it untill September or October if we have to as it is still green around here and grass is still growing. May you all get the moisture that you need.

2 inches rainfall here some years, sometimes up to 6 in the 8 years we've been here. 300 days of sun, dry bitter cold winters, 8.3 ph soil with less than 1 % organic matter, it is an interesting mix to make a plan.
But we've lots of irrigation water to flood irrigate, from April through October.
So this is what we are trying to do to make it work and build topsoil.

Now we have lots of fires in the area. The sun today is just a weak red spot in the sky but we can't smell what the fuel is because the smoke is too high. 10 miles south of me, a fire ran from eagle springs to coffeepot lake, about 20 miles.
Don't think my place would burn very hot - the grasshoppers aren't leaving much fuel.

This does seem to be a season of extremes. In north central IL our run of wicked wet weather has done a lot of damage to the oats. I'm hearing a lot of it is testing out with vomitoxin. Not good.

The area I'm in was never developed as an irrigated area --- just enough moisture to dryland farm wheat etc. So when we get too dry, there's no water to fall back on. Places like central WA and S Idaho which are quite a bit drier generally (almost desert-like) have huge irrigation projects and can grow a wide variety of crops. There would be none of it without irrigation.

Dale - you're a lot closer to some of those fires and we were even getting the smoke from the fire near Lake Chelan ~ 180 -200 miles away.

We've been lucky for no fires here but the loggers are at a stage 2 fire situation (hoot owl) where sawyers need to be out of the woods by 1PM. Fire season still has another 7-8 weeks left.

Kevin, how much per acre do you charge?

DS, We've been charging
$100 per acre, subsoil and no till seed when I can rig up with multiple implements and go slow. I've started pushing a vibrashank on the front 3pt and am getting a lot better sorghum/warm season germination in the perennial grass stands...
Plus cost of seed.
or $200 per hour acreages under 20 acres.

I came back from Libby, Mt, on Sunday where it was up to 105. The fires across the northern part of the state made visibility of less than a couple of miles. Wind shifted today so it don't look as bad but all of the northwest is on fire and some won't be put out except by snow. Dry lighting and high winds make things interesting.
Washington will have to change it's moto from the evergreen state to the scorched state.

Well our "no fire luck" has finally run out. One of the many fires burning in our area (below) after hundreds of lightning strikes last week followed by high winds (40 mph).

http://www.ktvb.com/story/news/local/idaho/2015/08/15/lawyer-complex-fire/31789651/