Harvest has ended or is close to ending for farmers in the southeast, with fall on the horizon.

They've gotten through a difficult summer, which had near record-low amounts of moisture during some months.

That meant yields were forecast to be down a bit this year.

But Outram-area farmer Adriaan Lievaart says there were still some good surprises this year.

"It was probably kind of below average on a whole. But we were still pleasantly surprised with the yields on some fields for the amount of rain we had some of those fields that we had, like less than half an inch of rain all summer in the growing season. So we weren't expecting maybe as much as we got, but it wasn't stellar, that's for sure." 

moisture levels were also sporadic, as some crops fared better in drier weather than others.

"Some crops love it dry like chickpeas. Even the peas were probably better than expected. We had green peas and chickpeas. They weren't by any means great crops, but still amazed at how well they produced," said Lievaart, "The canola was probably the most disappointing and kind of what we expected because it just didn't fall. It just didn't complete the season very well because a lot of it got burned off on the tops."

While a few farmers are still going along with harvest, Lievaart says that he hopes they can get done soon.

"There's still harvest going on, some of the later canola crops are still standing. The problem we're having that's going on right now is that some of the canola is regrowing from the bottom and so it's not really very easy to harvest because you're dealing with all this green material. So actually hoping for a good frost for some folks and for others maybe waiting for some spray to kick in so they can do the last part of their harvest.