Two reasons to lock down your bins

Marianne Stamm from "very windy" Westlock, Alberta, took this photo yesterday. A storm that blew the neighbour's topsoil all over her fields also blew this grain bin into the nearby Pembina River. "Winds were in excess of 100 kilometres per hour," she wrote.

A few minutes later another Alberta reader sent a news tip, it too related to wind. Here is what he wrote:  "I know of three farmers who have had their hopper bins opened and the grain allowed to run out on the ground. This past weekend here was very windy and one farmer estimates he lost 250 bushels of canola due to the bin being opened by someone and the wind blowing the canola away. What was likely done as a prank turned out to be very expensive for the farmer. Farmers may want to consider removing the handle or locking the bottoms of hopper bins."

The same email included another warning about bins and wind: "On a related issue, a neighbour who buys oats from us each year regularly grinds oats out of a hopper bin. He got in the habit of leaving the bin open so the rubber hopper under the bin remained full. A strong wind one day started blowing the oats out of the rubber hopper and with the  hopper bin bottom open, oats just kept feeding out of the bin and into the wind. In one windy day the bin emptied."