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Field conditions vary greatly in Wisconsin

Most Wisconsin farmers are waiting for warmer and dryer weather to get into the fields.

One farmer in the northern third of the state says there’s no chance of him getting any fieldwork done right now. Ben Augustine says, “Yup, still got frost yet.”

Augustine grows crops and milks cows near Sheldon in Rusk County.  He tells Brownfield his soils are cold and wet and over a clay base, so that means it will be too greasy to operate any equipment until about three weeks from now.

In southeastern Wisconsin, Ryan Nell from the Beaver Dam area has been pushing the early planting window for years with success and put in some soybeans Monday. “The 35 acres we got in were both on hills so that definitely gives us the advantage, I mean, we had some low ground. You weren’t going to go down there, and the 35 acres? I don’t really know if we could have planted much more. I was starting to run into some of the strips where they had a lot more moisture to them, so we just stayed out of those. We didn’t go any further.”

It may only be April, but this is the latest Nell has started planting soybeans in five years.  He usually gets some beans in the ground in March, and consistently sees good yields on those fields.