From the Fields: Flashbacks to 2019

We are having flashbacks to 2019 in our immediate area. We have a weather station out here and we had about 6.25 inches of rain in April. Our May total, as of May 22, was just under 4 inches. It’s been four-tenths of an inch and six-tenths of an inch. We haven’t had huge-quantity rain events, but we have just had every three or four days, we get a little bit of rain. I’m looking at puddles in the field.

We have soybeans to plant yet and almost all of our corn to plant yet. In our immediate area, there are many, many fields to plant. I would say Piatt County, as of May 22, is 80% planted, but this year, it has been so spotty.

We had this tiny little planting window the third week of April, and with the general warm weather and rain we’ve had, there are some fields that look just fantastic, that were planted during that timeframe. It’s just everything after that, the fields are not planted yet, crops not emerging. It will be a very interesting year to see how it all shakes out at harvest time.

Our wheat looks really good. We were able to plant it last October and had a very mild winter. It is probably a week ahead of average, as far as maturity. With all these rain events, it is responding, so it looks very good. If we can get in at the very end of June to cut wheat, we are excited. There’s been more than one Fourth of July that I’ve been harvesting wheat.