For Gladstone farmers Randy and Shelley Bjarnarson, the coming weeks are full of uncertainty. Their grain and livestock fields east of the community remain mostly underwater. “It’ll be a month before we even think about doing anything I think if the weather behaves itself,” Randy Bjarnarson said on Wednesday. Heavy rain and flooding along the Whitemud River, which flows from Neepawa, has put the farm in crisis. Drone video over Gladstone taken earlier this month shows overland flooding on both sides of the Yellowhead Highway, and much of that water remains this week. “Probably the biggest concern is getting feed up to the cattle for us,” he said. “Every field we have, she just drove across the fields from end to end and was driving through water across the whole thing. We actually have a dike around 90 acres north here we moved the cows in.” Their cattle may have to stay put for the time being. On top of that, the couple seeded late this year due to a cold spring, and how much they’ll be able to harvest remains unknown. “I don’t know, the barley is looking quite yellow, I don’t know if it’ll pull through or not,” he said. “The water has to get off first.” Gladstone resident Richard Tower knows many of his farming neighbours nearby and has been flying his drone over the area to capture the impact. Tower said there is nowhere for the water to drain fast enough. “This year, they even closed Highway 34 for fear that it would blow out the bridge, there was so much overland water flow coming through that and that’s the water you see, it travels seven miles overland before rejoining the Whitemud River right at Woodside,” Tower said. Keystone Agricultural Producers said municipalities and the province need to spend money now to prevent flooding in the future. “We need the infrastructure maintained properly and to allow for producers to be able to adequately, in these events, be able to get rid of some of this water in a timely manner,” said Jill Verwey, president of KAP. Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation said it expects a large spike in crop insurance claims come harvest, with claims coming in from all over the province this year. “It really seems that it’s happened in many more areas in Manitoba this year,” said David Van Deynze, chief product officer of MASC. “It’s less isolated than maybe we see in some years.”
