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Farmers head into spring with plenty of ground moisture

This farm field near Ionia looked more like a lake than a field over the weekend. New Hampton Tribune photo by Bob Fenske
This farm field near Ionia looked more like a lake than a field over the weekend. New Hampton Tribune photo by Bob Fenske

After challenging  season last year, agronomist says growers deserve a ‘nice, normal year’

By Bob Fenske, editor@nhtrib.com

Ask Terry Basol about what kind of year the ISU Extension agronomist believes area farmers deserve and he has a quick answer.

“The guys have earned a nice, normal year,” he said. “After last year, which had to be one of the strangest, most challenging growing seasons I’ve ever seen, I think they deserve that.”

And although many farm fields the area look more conducive to boating these days, Basol said there are reasons growers are optimistic heading into the 2019 season.

Mainly, area farm fields have a full complement of moisture, although it’s not because of all that melting snow that has left fields looking like lakes instead of land that will produce corn and soybeans this summer.

That’s because last fall’s rains left farm fields with plenty of moisture to take into 2019.

“You can’t really ask for much more than what we’re going to start with,” Basol said. “The problem right now is that the ground is still frozen so all that water is just running off, which is why we’re dealing with so many flooding problems. The ground just can’t soak it up because the frost is still in there.”

Basol said it’s important for the area to not have a wet spring this year. In other words, farmers don’t want a repeat of April 2018 when the area was hit with several April snowstorms and prolonged periods of rain.

“We have so much moisture out there right now, we could use a little drier spring than normal,” he said. “Otherwise we’re going to go through what we did last year when we worried about getting the crop in.”

Last April more or less set the tone for what was a difficult growing season in 2018.

After sweating out the planting season, farmers endured above-normal rainfall in June, August and September, yet were still able to bring in what Basol called a “solid crop.”

“When you really think about it, we really only had July last year as a good month for our fields,” he said. “I think Mother Nature owes us a good year. Our growers have earned one.”

 

 

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