WKEI AM 1450 recently issued the following announcement.
Old Man Winter roared back to life this week, adding snow to the mixture of rain and saturated soils our CropWatchers 2.0 team is already battling. The added precipitation is a rehash of last week’s CropWatcher reports, further delaying this spring’s ‘to do’ list.
“This morning I had to look outside and see grass poking out from snow,” said Kankakee County farmer Greg St. Aubin. “I know everybody is very anxious to get started. Last week, we did have an opportunity to put some anhydrous ammonia on some ground that is a little bit drier than most of our other soils, but the long-term forecast is showing that we could possibly be two more weeks with wetter weather.”
For McHenry County farmer John Bartman, the white stuff came in spades.
“It’s April 15 – Tax Day – in Marengo, Ill., but it might as well be February 15 because we received five inches of snow last night,” Bartman said Monday. “That being said, no one is out in the field doing any type of fieldwork. There were a few people who were experimenting – going out and doing some tillage work – but no one was putting anything in the ground.”
Farther south, in Moultrie County, it was rain putting a damper on spring fieldwork. Despite the hold up, Lucas Roney found plenty to occupy his time, including his son’s baseball games, birthday parties and a few odds and ends around the farm.
“We had quite a bit of rain last week, but we were able to haul our seed beans to Mt. Pulaski and get another couple of bins cleaned out, so we’ll take the good with the bad, I guess,” Roney said. “We are running out of projects to work on in the shop, so we might start hauling some corn this week to make the work load this summer a little easier.”
At the south end of the state, White County farmer Bryce Williams dealt with rain, too.
“Nothing has really changed since last week,” Williams said. “We spread fertilizer mid-week last week, but after getting over two inches of rain this weekend and it being in the 30s this morning, it’s definitely going to be a late spring.”
The story is much the same in most corners of the state. USDA’s most recent Crop Progress Report, released April 15, showed corn planting was off to a slow start with so few acres planted it didn’t register for the report.
Unfortunately, the extended forecast looks to keep planters in the sheds.
“More rain in the forecast this week, so we’re staring to lean more towards not using preplant anhydrous ammonia and use more 28 percent liquid urea preplant with our herbicides,” Roney said. “The window keeps getting tighter, so we’re going to have to make some tough choices whether to plant soybeans or corn first.”
Still, as the saying goes: If you don’t like the weather in Illinois just wait five minutes; it will change.
“Spring in Illinois will throw just about anything at you,” said McDonough County farmer Colby Hunt. “We’re working on terminating our cover crops and, on Saturday, we planted a little to make sure everything worked on the planter. Then, on Sunday, we had between two and five inches of snow. But, today (Tuesday), it’s warm again and I think this afternoon, we will try planting and spraying again.”
Original source can be found here.
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