By Rick Dandes
SUNBURY — Wet weather brings its share of worries, but all in all, most farmers would rather have to deal with too much rain than suffer through a drought.
“The rain and wet fields caused disease problems, particularly with some wheat growers, but I believe we’ll have an adequate harvest this year,” said William Dietrick, Union County Conservation District manager.
Dietrick cautioned that final harvesting results will depend on the weather over the next few weeks. “If we have cold weather,” he said, “that would not be good for crops.”
Glenda Strouse, president of the Northumberland County Farm Bureau, wasn’t as optimistic as Dietrick.
Strouse, whose family owns and operates an 800-acre farm in Point Township, said they had a late start to the year planting seed. Some crops weren’t even planted.
“We had excellent production in 2008,” she said. “In a way, the money we made from those crops has carried us through much of this year.”
In 2008, figures from the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau show that Northumberland, Snyder and Union County farms combined to produce more than 8 million bushels of corn for grain, and Snyder and Union County farms harvested 170,000 tons of corn for silage.
Northumberland, Snyder and Union counties combined to produce 1.3 million bushels of soybeans and 465,000 bushels of wheat.
At many farms this summer, there was no need for irrigation because of the rain. “It’s not a bad thing to have rain,” Dietrick said. “I’d rather deal with rain than a lack of it. When you have a field that is well drained, it can handle the extra rain.”
The hay crop did OK, he said, although a number of farmers reported that it was difficult getting dry hay, since there was a pattern of rain every four or five days.
Soybeans were late coming in this year because of cooler conditions. They are slow in maturing, Dietrick said. “As long we don’t have an early frost, we’ll be OK,” he said.
