Recovery from hail storm delayed

- Damage expected to have impact on area residents for months.

Posted 4 months ago

Photo courtesy Matt Gosling - A huge hail storm in August destroyed numerous area crops, cutting them down to a post-harvest height overnight.

Robert Massey

Standard Reporter

A record storm is still causing ripples through Strathmore and area communities and will be for a while figures one local business owner.

Matt Gosling, with Agri-Trend, knows about crops and what they mean to the local economy and he says that we will be feeling the effects well into next year.

“The hail storm cut a wide swath and wiped out some of the best land in the county. And it doesn’t just affect the farmer.”

No it doesn’t, it also affects the people buying the farmers grain, those who work for them during harvest, those who the farmer rents equipment from and the loss of all that income will spread throughout the economy.

And it will definitely affect how much feed is available for purchase.

“When a hail storm like that goes through it affects everyone in Wheatland County,” said Gosling. “We will be feeling the effects of this storm even into next year.”

Next year Gosling figures that farmers are going to be fighting volunteer crops. A volunteer crop is a previous years’ crop that grows again.

“It’s going to be a tough spring for some farmers,” he said.

Most farmers were insured for hail damage but for those who weren’t it will mean a long hard winter, with most of their livelihood gone up in snow and ice.

Before mother nature’s knock-out blow, the crops were recovering nicely from a cold beginning to spring. But with some heavy rainfall the crops were beginning to recover. However, farmers were, and still are, feeling the effects of springs cold snap, at the moment Gosling figures they are two weeks behind in harvesting.

“The crops have recovered very well from the spring. This warm weather has brought along the crops very nicely.”

Even with the loss of so much income Gosling figures that area farmers aren’t going to change their strategies.

“The guys out here are aggressive,” he said. “They will keep doing what they’ve been doing. I think there is still some optimism in the tank.”