CITY MALL: Farmers Scramble to Get Crops Planted

Farmers are working night and day to get their crops planted after weeks of unseasonably cold weather.   

“The weather isn’t cooperating – it’s cold, wet, and hard to get into the field,” Muskego farmer Jack King said. 

“Last year was an exceptionally good year” said King, who plants 600 acres each year largely to feed 135 head of milk cows and 95 calves.  “We were all done planting by the first week in May.”  

King has only been able to get about half his corn crop and some soybeans in by what is now late-May, 2011.  At the same time, crop prices are “out of control,” King said.  “Normally we see $3 or $4 for a bushel of corn – now it’s $6 or $7.  Beans are $13 a bushel.“

Even with spiking prices, expenses like fertilizers and land rentals are rising, too. “Hydrogen and nitrogen have skyrocketed up – fertilizer is $400 to $500 a ton and we can use 250 pounds just as a starter fertilizer,” King said.  “If you have to buy feed, that’s where it gets real expensive.”

Cash croppers who sell vegetables directly to markets are also having a hard time gaining ground in Muskego after the muddy spring. 

Carolyn Basse, whose farm supports 200 acres of cash crops like tomatoes, peppers, pickles, and corn, has just 25 acres of soybeans planted and some sweet corn. 

“The soil here (in Muskego) is more clay and holds the water more,” Basse said, observing that Tom Schaefer, who leases and works Basse farmland, is off helping a farmer in Waterford get crops in. 

“The soil is sandier” west of Muskego and can be planted sooner, Basse said.

“We’re about a month behind and you can never regain what you could have sold,” Basse said, “but somehow it always turns out.”

King is also optimistic.  “It could catch up as long as we have heat units and moisture,” he said.  “Farmers always think it’s going to be better this year.  If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be in this business.”