KEWAUNEE COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The early winter weather has some area farmers racing to get their crops out of the fields.
Experts say impacts from the record-breaking wet year may still be felt years from now.
Temperatures in the teens and a biting westerly wind might not be the best conditions to harvest corn, but it’s the second week of November and Kewaunee County corn producer Mike Zellner tells FOX 11 he’ll take what he can get.
“It was raining all the time, but now with it’s snowing. The snow doesn’t help anything either, but it’s okay. Good sunny days like today it goes good combining.”
At nearby Salentine Homestead Dairy, a field of alfalfa sits in snow.
Josh Salentine tells FOX 11 the crop was healthy and he wanted to make hay, but because wet weather limited his harvest time, he chose to fill his silos with corn silage first.
“You try to do everything that you can in the fall to set yourself up for a good spring, to get rolling again.”
Agriculture experts say the heavy harvesting equipment combined with the soggy season will have a long-lasting impact on fields in the area.
“The ruts, but then the compaction that will be. The bare-minimum they say is 10 years, to get the soil back to where it needs to get back to. But it could be longer, it could be never,” said Aerica Bjurstrom, Kewaunee County Agriculture Agent.
Bjurstrom says planting cover crops will help but in many areas,
“We’re seeing ice in the fields now. It went from completely saturated to ice and frozen soil. So there wasn’t anything in between this year.”
Josh Salentine says he hopes the months ahead will be relatively quiet.
“No surprises. No freezing rain. No flash warm-ups. Just let’s get through winter.”
Mike Zellner agrees.
“Hopefully, it’s better growing conditions than what we had this year, but we’ll take what Mother Nature gives us. That’s all we can do.”
Agriculture experts say the situation could lead to feed shortages on the farm.
Corn silage and straw could be in tight supply by the spring.
