News

Rain continues to hamper Wisconsin fieldwork

Farmers in Wisconsin continue to be slowed by rain showers. 

Rick Gehrke farms near Omro in eastern Wisconsin. “All of our corn is in. We plant about four to five hundred acres of corn, and we have about 200 acres of soybeans left, and we have about two to three hundred of them in the ground so far.”

Gehrke says with heavy clay ground, the rain is not needed right now. “We’ve had about three inches in the last week. I know if you go south of here a little bit towards the Fond du Lac area, they’ve had over five, so I mean there’s pockets within an hour of us that have gotten quite a bit of rain.

In northwest Wisconsin north of Chippewa Falls Randy Woodruff tells Brownfield he’s finished planting, but the rain is still slowing down fieldwork. “I’m still trying to get some spraying done when it stops raining, but overall, we’re not sitting too bad. I like the moisture, anyways. It’s better than being dry out there.”

Woodruff says one neighbor cut first crop hay last week, and he’s expecting to see a lot of hay cut as soon as it’s dry enough.

There are flood warnings for the Yellow River in Juneau County, and the Rock River in Dodge County.  Many other waterways are very high, and many central Wisconsin fields have standing water.  There are several farmers that will not get corn planted before the Friday crop insurance deadline.