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Warm weather fuels hope for high crop yields

Dave Adams, who grows corn, soybeans, wheat and hay, says this year’s growing season is much improved over 2009. Spring was warm, the summer has been hot, and rain has been pretty timely for Walworth County farmers. Terry Mayer/staff.

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP — It was the beginning of 2010 when Dave Adams finally finished harvesting the corn he’d planted in the spring of 2009.

Last year’s cool summer prevented the corn from ripening, and when it did, wet weather kept the farmer from getting into his fields, located just across from the former racetrack along Bloomfield Road. Frost even killed some of the crop before he could harvest it.

“It was miserable,” said Adams, who also grows soybeans, wheat and hay. “We had most of the harvest done (in fall), but I was out in the fields finishing up in February.”

This year, it’s a different story: a warm spring that allowed early planting and a hot summer that still had a good amount of rain.

“Crops are looking very good right now,” Adams said. “The weather conditions this spring were perfect to get the (corn) crop going. I had my planting done by the sixth of May. Usually, it’s more like the end of May.”

Aside from what was a dry July for him, “we had rain most of the time when we needed it,” he said.

Adams expects to be harvesting corn by the first part of October, if not earlier.

Read the full story in the Sept. 12, 2010 e-edition of Walworth County Sunday, HERE.