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Warm spell kicks spring into high gear

A southern Illinois farmer says the recent stretch of warm weather has many farmers in his area busy.

Granvil Travis, a row crop farmer in Massac County, tells Brownfield, “We’ve been spreading a lot of fertilizer.”  He says, “We still got a handful of guys that put on anhydrous here pre-plant, so they’re all running this week.  A lot of activity going on down here.”

While he doesn’t know of any seed being planted in the area just yet, Travis says it won’t be long.

“We try not to get in too big of a hurry just because we do have that chance of a late frost or something, and we’ve got a lot of river bottom ground that seems to always be underwater at least once before June 1st.”  He says, “It would be kind of neat to go ahead and plant some early beans here in the middle of March, but we’ll just see how the weather goes.”

Travis says he’ll plant some of his soybeans first while waiting for more stable weather conditions to begin planting his corn crop.

AUDIO: Granvil Travis – Southern Illinois farmer