This past weekend was our best chance for rain for a while, and we did get a trace amount. But that was nowhere near substantial enough to salvage our "hill" corn or spur any growth in our hayfields. At this point, we're looking at the grim reality of having even less of a corn silage crop than last year and not much hay. The good news is that, provided it starts raining within the next month, we can replant our corn fields in sorghum or sorghum-sudangrass and still put up silage this fall. We were already planning on planting these crops on about a third of our normal corn acreage. It won't have quite the yield or quality that corn would, but it would definitely be better than nothing! Also, the hayfields and pastures should come around if we get the moisture.
I guess the biggest difference between having an early summer drought like this year and a mid-to-late summer drought like last year is that you still have time for contingencies provided the drought does break. All we can really do in the meantime though is keep praying and have faith that at some point we'll get some real relief.
No comments:
Post a Comment