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LIVINGSTON COUNTY – The rain has dampened local farm fields but not farmers’ spirits.
With lots of rain behind us and more on the way, planting season is certainly not going as planned.
“We’re probably about two weeks behind,” said Leslie Hamilton of Triple H Farms in Geneseo. “We plant peas so our peas were planted about three weeks ago now because they’re always the first thing we put in. That was right before the rain really started picking up. There’s definitely a lot of standing water out in the middle of our field that has already drowned out some of the peas an a few wet holes that we even had to plant around because they were so wet even when we first planted.”
Triple H, which won Farm of the Year earlier in 2017, is not the only farm feeling bogged down. Many farmers are typically about halfway done planting by now. But this year, some have not even started. Still, hope is far from lost.
“We don’t plant too long of a seed maturity, it’s kind of an average seed maturity for around this area,” said Hamilton. “But some people who plant extended maturities could possibly return seed to get a shorter maturity if they can’t plant in the next week or two here, which is a potential yield loss depending on what you plant or how long you figure that your seed is going to need to grow.”
As the adage goes, there’s always a silver lining.
“Each year brings new challenges,” said Hamilton. “Last year everybody knows how dry it was. It’s feast or famine, right? We’re not in a shortage for moisture, that’s good, and we’ve definitely had time to get our equipment thoroughly checked over and ready to go so that when we are ready we’ll be ready to roll and gotten a few things done that if we had started really early we would have kind of missed out on finishing up.”