REXBURG — The hay is in the barn, the grain is in the bin and the ‘taters are still a-growin.’

    Farmers say the local harvest in the upper valley has gone fairly well despite a growing season with higher temperatures and not much rain.

    Russ Luthy, foreman at Centennial Grain, a grain storage facility in Rexburg, provided some information about the grain harvest.

    “Yields are down a bit this year,” he said. “We think it’s because we went from too wet to too dry in less than 10 days. It has been a hot, dry summer.”

    He said the quality has been good for most of the grain that has been handled by Centennial.

    The company handles soft white wheat, hard white wheat and barley for livestock feed.

    “There have been good weather conditions through the harvest,” said Cindy Campbell, office manager at Centennial.

    Hay quality is especially dependent on dry weather after the hay is cut and is curing to be baled.

    And the weather through the summer was generally cooperative for that, with just occasional scattered thundershowers.

    Winston Larsen, farms in the Salem area and is the president of Madison County Farm Bureau.

    He said he’s well on the way to a third-crop of hay and the first two crops had high protein content.

    Two crops are the norm in the upper valley and and a third crop is a bonus, farmers say.

    “It’s been so hot the third crop is growing well,” Larsen said.

    But what is good for one crop may not be best for another and the hot weather may put a damper on potato size.

    “The early varieties like Norkotas and Rangers look really good, but the Russets are tending to be smaller than normal due to the heat,” Larsen said.

    Information Larsen gets from other farmers about their yields is largely positive.

    “The irrigated grain has been really good with yields up to 130 bushels per acre,” he said. “But the dry farms have been averaging 10 bushels per acre, down from about 60 bushels per acre last year.”

    He said the hay yield has been about normal.

    He said while other areas in the country have been dealing with drought, irrigation water has been sufficient here.

    “Here we’re going to have enough because the reservoirs were full at the start of the season,” he said. “All-in-all we’re really lucky we had the reservoirs full so we’d have water for the crops. We’re grateful to our forefathers for having the foresight to build the reservoirs.”

    And he said farmers are hoping for a good amount of precipitation this coming winter to replenish those reservoirs.