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Michigan remains cold and wet

Much of Michigan is still too cold and wet for farmers to get into fields.

Presque Isle County’s Christian Tolllini tells Brownfield early field activities are about on pace for mid-April despite the massive ice storm that moved across Northern Michigan.

“If we continue to get some sunshine and some warmer temps that we’ve been getting this past weekend, I certainly expect we’ll start to see some oats going in the ground here by the end of this week, maybe next week,” he shares.

He says tree fruit in the region should be able to recover but, “Any of the forest lands, plantation pine trees, definitely get the brunt of the damage.”

“Anywhere you see a lot of planted pine trees, a lot of places they just look like sticks in the ground now because all the branches are completely gone and the tops of them it just snapped off completely,” he explains.

The USDA says oats and sugarbeets in Michigan are two percent planted.

Winter wheat is still one percent jointed with condition rated 64 percent good to excellent.

Topsoil moisture is 20 percent surplus in the state and subsoil moisture supplies are at 18 percent.

Governor Whitmer has declared a state of emergency across 12 northern Michigan counties following an extreme ice storm at the end of March.

Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.