No doubt about it, farmers are behind on harvesting hay and planting vegetable crops due to a cold and soggy spring. But some sunshine and warmer weather in the last week gave farmers a more optimistic outlook on the season.
There has been too much water and not enough sun, Kathy Hopkins, extension educator at University of Maine Cooperate Extension’s Somerset Office, said Monday.
The wet weather could also play havoc with fruit crops because the bees won’t come out to pollinate the blossoms in the rain, she said.
“The fields are still really wet and crops are not being put in,” Vivianne Holmes, cooperative extension educator at the Androscoggin County office, said Monday. “It’s just been setting us all back.”
Some farmers who have been able to plant potatoes are concerned that the first planting will rot in the ground because the soil is so saturated, Laura Rand, county executive director of the Androscoggin, Sagadahoc and Oxford county Farm Service Agency, said Monday. They’re also “very late” on their maintenance spraying, she added.
There has been some corn emergence but not a lot, Rand said. Corn needs heat to grow, she said.
“People in general,” Hopkins said, “are concerned about these things and are hoping for better weather. There is still time, possibly, if we get some sun and warm weather for the crops to develop but it has to be soon.”
Franklin County is probably not as bad off as some areas, said Gary Raymond, executive director of the Franklin County Farm Service Agency.
The soil is “very wet and hard to work,” he said, and a major concern is getting the corn planted.
Farmers in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties took advantage of the sunshine and warmer temperatures to get some corn planted and bale some hay before Monday’s wet weather stalled them again.
“It was pretty good until today,” John Davis of New Sharon said Monday.
He started mowing June 1 and was able to get to 60 of his 300 acres so far, yielding 124 bales of grass, Davis said. Baled grass contains more moisture than dry hay when its baled, he said.
He has fewer bales so far and started haying five days later than last year, he said, because “we didn’t get the heat to make the grass grow. It’s growing now. I think it’s going to be a good year but it’s going to be late in coming.”
Hay is late but it’s thick, Harold Souther of Livermore Falls said Monday.
The maturity of the grass is at least one week behind schedule, Souther said.
The ground is so wet in a lot of the fields, he said, that farmers cannot get their equipment on them. More than one inch of rain fell in the area between late Sunday night and early Monday, Souther said.
“On Sunday, we got 350 bales of dry square hay” from a field that drained well, Judy Smith of East Dixfield said Monday. “It’s excellent quality hay.”
“Our plan is to do hay,” Gayle Smedberg of Oxford said Monday. “We do a lot of crops. We’re about two weeks behind on corn. Usually when we finish planting our corn, then we do hay.”
During the last few days, Smedberg said, they did plant some corn.
“This is far from normal. You don’t usually have all this rain,” she said.
Before the rain, the grass didn’t grow because it was too cold, she said.
“It’s got to get better; it can’t get much worse,” Smedberg said. “Things are going to be late but we’ll have them and they’ll be worth waiting for. Now that the sun has come out, I’m more optimistic.”
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