Rain, Cold Could Delay Crops; Officials Seek State, Federal Help

Check out this story from the Watertown Daily Times.

Go to https://www.nny360.com/communitynews/agriculture/officials-prepare-for-possible-crop-shortage-seek-state-and-federal/article_92d078a4-3f66-5bb9-9be6-a0cb1e2ac343.html

Cool Temperatures, Rain Delay Planting in Some Parts of NYS

The cool temperatures and rain have delayed planting in many parts of the state.

Here is a story from the North Country.

Read it at http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/news03/few-weeks-of-rain-and-cold-delay-crop-planting-little-to-no-other-impact-for-farmers-20170522 this link.

Apples Smaller, But Sweeter This Year Due to Drought

From Empire Farm & Dairy magazine:

By DEBRA J. GROOM
dgroom@wdt.net
 

Some New York state apples

It’s a wonder there’s any type of apple crop in New York state this year.
 
All sorts of calamities have hit this growing season, from early bud to late frost to no rain.
 
But still, somehow, the apples survived, grew and this season, New York is seeing a “great” apple harvest.
 
“By the time this crop gets off the trees and to market, all New York state apple fans are going to see is ‘great’ — great variety, great quality and great flavor,” said Jim Allen, president of the New York Apple Association.
 
Allen said that despite early budding of trees throughout the state, a late frost and hail hitting some areas, the state’s apple producers still will pick about 30 million cartons of fruit this year. This is down from the 32 million picked last year, but still above the state’s average crop of 28.6 million cartons over the last five years.
 
A check around the state shows a hit and miss on varieties and what growers have been able to harvest.
 
In Central New York, early varieties like Paula Red are OK, but some later varieties have been nearly wiped out.
 
At Adam’s Acres, a certified organic orchard in Jamesville, Onondaga County, this is the dire note on the business’s website:
 

New York snapdragon apples

“This year’s crop is the worst we have had. The spring winter weather killed most of our apple buds. Then the drought caused the limited fruit to be small. Also last week’s storms destroyed about 200 of our trees. The end result is we lost our early varieties. We will not be in full operations until mid-September. And we will have little or no Honeycrisp this year!”
 
Others echo this sad tale.
 
James Sims at Owen Orchards in Sennett, Cayuga County, said they lost from 50 to 60 percent of their crop due to the early frost.
 
“It was just 3 to 4 degrees too cold right after budding,” Sims said. “And we’ve got no peaches this year. They were frozen.”
 
Another orchard seeing the bad effects of Mother Nature this year is O’Neill’s Orchard in LaFayette, Onondaga County. This is the note from its website: “A warm winter resulted in an early bud break. Subsequent freeze/frost events contributed to varietal loss of up to 100 percent on certain varieties. 

Apple picking will be severely curtailed.”
 
The same is true at Beak & Skiff, also in LaFayette. Mark Fleckenstein, a co-owner of the business, characterized this year’s crop as “good,” but said two frosts killed off a number of buds on his trees.
 
“The crop is lighter in the valley,” he said.
 
It got much colder in the valley areas of his orchard than on the hills during the Feb. 14 and April 5 freezes, killing off some buds.
 

The apples that are on the trees — and many orchards have trees filled with fruit — may be smaller in size this year due to the drought. But the quality of the apples won’t be harmed at all — in fact, Allen said the lack of water makes the apples crunchier and sweeter because with less water content, the concentration of sugars in each apple is higher.
 
“There is plenty of fruit on the trees this year, they’re just smaller in size than usual. Moms and kids will be especially happy,” Allen said.
 
And when speaking about the apple sweetness caused by the drought, he said “even downsides can have upsides in this industry.”
 
“We have a lack of size, but they’re sweeter — the sugar is high,” Fleckenstein said.
 
“The big loss this year of course with the dry weather is size (of the apples),” said David Frost, owner of McPherson Orchards and Christmas Tree Farm in Genesee County. 

“While normally we would start picking right now (early September), they are so small I’m not sure if I’ll pick any ... Later varieties have another 30 days pretty much, give or take. So depending on weather again, how much size they’ll put on by then, time will tell,” he said.
 
Frost said apples need a consistent rain throughout the season to grow large.
 
“A number of the showers we had (this year) had been so small — a tenth, two tenths, three tenths,” he said. “They don’t get down anywhere. The surface gets wet, but it doesn’t penetrate or go anywhere. We just needed one of those day-long rains where it would push water down and get down to where it needs to be.”
 
In the Hudson Valley’s apple region, growers also are seeing smaller apples, but good quality apples.
 
“Everything is a little bit smaller this year than it was last year, but it’s still good fruit and it’s still fruit that you would like to pick,” said Bill Philip, owner of Philip Orchards in Claverack, Columbia County.
 
The orchard grows about 15 varieties of apples and about five types of pears. Philip said the pears don’t seem to be affected by the drought.
 
In Kinderhook, Yonder Fruit Farms, a garden center and farm market, has also seen smaller-sized apples this year because of the weather conditions.
 
“We are starting to pick some apples and they are smaller in size because of the drought,” said Peter Chiraro, the owner of the farm located in Columbia County.
 
Yonder Fruit Farms sells fruits, vegetables, flowers and more at various locations throughout the Capital Region. The farm’s pick-your-own orchards are located in Valatie, also in Columbia County.
 
Chiraro is worried consumers will buy fewer apples because of their size.
 
“It hurts us because we are not going to have the size in apples. There’s going to be less buying because it’s smaller,” he said.
 
The farm has been irrigating crops since May in an effort to provide relief from the drought.
 
In Greene County, Henry Boehm, owner of Boehm Farm in Climax, said droughts haven’t affected his apples and irrigation is important in order to have a bountiful apple crop.
 
“We irrigate, so we got nice apples,” Boehm said.
 
However, his peach crop wasn’t so lucky. Boehm said the flower bud of the peach plant is more susceptible to freezing and in February all it took was two days to kill the peach crop entirely.
 
“There’s no peaches, they froze in February,” he said.
 
He added normal winter weather doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on his crops overall.
 
“It doesn’t seem to make much difference,” Boehm said.
 
Allen of the apple association said the state’s growers are growing more of the varieties that apple fans love — including new favorites Gala and Honeycrisp, and old New York favorites McIntosh and Empire.
 
“Our growers produce more apples now on fewer acres because of technology — smaller trees that produce more fruit, computer-aided packing and sorting, and high-tech cold storage that puts apples to sleep until they are ready to ship to stores,” he said.
 
And by buying local New York state apples, consumers support hundreds of farm families.
 
“Many of our families have been growing apples for several generations,” Allen said. “It’s always exciting to see the next generation getting involved.”
 
For more information on New York apples, go to www.nyapplecountry.com. On that site, you will find a variety guide to figure out exactly which apple is best for your plans (fresh eating, baking, salads) and when those varieties are normally available.

Contributing to this story: Victoria Addison and Daniel Zuckermanm, Columbia-Greene Media; Mallory Diefenbach, Daily News in Batavia.

Drought Stresses Crops Throughout New York State

By JOE LEATHERSICH, MALLORY DIEFENBACH,
JIM KRENCIK and DEBRA J. GROOM
Empire Farm & Dairy
 
It’s hot.
 
It’s dry.
 
It’s not raining.
 

Drought map as of early August

That’s the forecast farmers have been dealing with since they began putting crops in the ground a few months ago. It doesn’t matter what they’re growing, the crops have been stressed due to the ongoing drought hitting a good part of New York state.
 
“Many areas of the state are in a severe drought,” said Aaron Reynolds, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Buffalo. “The precipitation has been real spotty in nature. And that is producing stress in the crops.”
 
According to a map put out by the National Weather Service, the worst of the drought is in Western New York. The map shows a severe drought area along the Southern Tier from Binghamton west, the Finger Lakes region, the Suffolk County area of Long Island and most of Western New York.
 
Patches of the Hudson Valley, Nassau County on Long Island and most of Central New York, such as Onondaga, Oswego and Jefferson counties, are in a moderate drought. The north country is deemed “abnormally dry.”
 
It doesn’t seem the weather will get any better any time soon.
 
Though rain is forecasted for short periods, it’s going to take a lot more than that to break the drought. And even then, the damage has been done to many of Western New York’s farms.
 
Crops struggling
 
Some farmers are fighting a two-front war as the drought worsens — with one problem not as obvious as the other.
 
Most obviously, the lack of water is hurting the crop harvest. Yields are way down as plants are struggling to grow. By this time of year, corn stalks should be above your head, but this year’s crop is topping out at about two feet high. And it’s not like the corn is behind schedule — it’s just done growing.
 
John Starowitz of Starowitz Farms in Byron, Genesee County, said his corn crop has already “tasselled,” meaning the corn is as good as it’s going to get, and it’s barely above your knee.
 
“When you have crops and vegetables, they all rely on water, and you’ve got to have a certain amount of water,” he said. “When you don’t have water, everything is skimpy and small.”
 
Jason Turek, who runs the third-largest vegetable farm in the state — Turek Farm near King Ferry in Cayuga County — grows 4,000 acres of vegetables that are sold throughout the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states. Of that, 2,500 acres are sweet corn.
 
He said he is harvesting only about a quarter of each field in early harvest vegetables, like corn and green beans. “It is hurting us — we’re in denial,” he said.
 
He said his corn is “hurt for sure” and by now, he should have cut 20,000 boxes of cabbage for shipment. He’s cut 1,000 boxes.
Ironically, his farm is spread out along the shore of Cayuga Lake. 

He’s lacking water but there’s a whole lake nearby.
 
But Turek said it really doesn’t make any difference. If he could draw water from the lake, he would be allowed by regulation to take only 100,000 gallons a day. He said he needs 65 million gallons to water his entire farm.
 
“It’s like fighting a forest fire with a garden hose,” he said.
 
The drought is bringing on another problem that might not be as obvious, too: pests.
 
Pests are attracted to moisture, and the only things with any semblance of it are the crops, even though they’re struggling themselves.
 
Starowitz said the bugs, deer and woodchucks are all causing damage to his crop, worse this year than past years because of the drought. The pests are “clearing out anything that’s green,” he said.
 
He hasn’t completely given up hope yet, though. He said there might be enough crop to sell to buyers, but he’s not expecting to make any money on it.
 
“Basically we’re just riding the storm out, we’re going with the punches,” Starowitz said. “There’s always hope.”
 
While some crops suffer in the drought, others are doing well. 

Onions seem to be coming through the drought OK, said Christy Hoepting, Cornell Cooperative Extension vegetable specialist.
 
“One of the benefits of it being hot and dry, and so breezy, is that we don’t have very much disease pressure,” Hoepting said. “The disease pressure is what can really be ravaging. There are a couple diseases that get going when it is cool and wet, so we don’t have to worry about any of those. The biggest pest concern is onion thrips, which do very well in the heat.”
 
However, onions — which prefer moderate temperatures — will grow quicker, and may not reach their full-size potential, especially in ground which hasn’t been irrigated. Still, Hoepting believes this season’s yields will be “pretty good.”
 
“Our (onion) quality should be excellent,” she said, explaining without the diseases to contend with, onions can produce crop of higher worth. “Quality is usually excellent in a hot, dry year at the expense of maximum bulb size.”
 
Dairy farmers feel the heat
 
Dairy farmers are having trouble handling the heat, too.
While crop farmers are dealing with the effects of the drought now as they harvest, the season will be over soon and what’s done will be done.
 
Dairy farming, however, is a 24/7, 365-day operation and can’t necessarily stop because corn and hay crops failed. But the harvests are so low that farmers are looking elsewhere for feed.
 
“We’re taking a lot of steps to purchase feed,” said Dale Stein of the multi-generational Stein Farms in Le Roy, which has about 1,000 cows on it. He’s taking these steps because his corn harvest is down 60 percent.
 
“We’re going to be so short (until next harvest),” he said.
 
Unsurprisingly, this shortage brings on a lot of financial burden. 

Stein said this shortage will cost him about $25,000 a month for 12 months until he can harvest again. Many farmers have insurance for situations just like this, as Stein does and has tapped into a little this year, but that doesn’t recoup lost revenue as much as it lightens the debt burden. 

For instance, Starowitz said if you have $100,000 in debt because of the drought, insurance might cover $90,000 of that, leaving the farm still in the red.
 
Stein said dairy farms’ problems are being compounded as well by drought; not only are they paying for feed, but small revenues are being brought in because of the low price of milk.
 
He added this has him “concerned” and “worried” that the effects of this situation might linger for another two years.
 
One glimmer of hope in all of this for some dairy farmers is that milk production is relatively stable thanks to technological advancements.
 
Cows like cooler temperatures and definitely do not like the heat. But since a lot of farms have invested in equipment that regulates the temperature in Western New York’s fickle climate, most cows are none-the-wiser.
 
“Our cows are kept cool,” Stein said.
 
Livestock impacted as well
 
The drought affects farmers in different ways, depending on their crop and what they are raising.
 
For those who raise livestock, there was no pasture available for animals to graze. While livestock typically graze about six to seven months out of the year, pasture foraging was limited because the season started so dry.
 
“A lot of livestock producers are now feeding hay, which they would normally feed during the winter,” said Nancy Glazier, small farm specialist on the Northwest Dairy, Livestock and Field Crops Team for Cornell Cooperative Extension. “Their hay harvest has been lighter than normal, so that’s adding another kind of a wrinkle. 

They have to purchase some hay elsewhere.”
 
While some farmers have been buying hay from their neighbors, others have been going out of the region and out of state to get what they need. She added some farmers even put in alternative feed such as oats or another type of annual grass.
 
The drought affects the livestock as well; Glazier said the drought and high heat causes more stress.
 
“Some farms may actually keep their animals in the barns, because it is a little cooler if they don’t have trees available for them in pastures,” she said.
 
“Farmers are pretty resilient,” Glazier went on. “Every year is a different year. They just have to deal with the hand they are dealt from Mother Nature.”
 
Other commodities affected by drought
 
Most people probably wouldn’t think trees would be bothered by a lack of water. Mature trees have deep roots and can draw on underground water for their needs.
 
But the lack of rain and excessive heat still can stress trees. Christmas tree growers, maple syrup producers and apple growers all are worried about this year’s crop or future crops.
 
Mary Jeanne Packer, president of the Christmas Tree Growers of New York, said some producers have lost up to half their crop of new trees planted this spring. Each year, growers replace the trees they harvested and sold last holiday season and it’s these young trees that have trouble in a drought.
 
“Some have set up irrigation,” she said. “Most of the problem is west of Syracuse.”
 
The loss of young trees won’t affect consumers immediately, but you never know down the road. Packer said if growers lose half of their young trees this summer, they will have to plant double the amount next spring and that damages their bottom lines.
 
Jim Allen, president of the New York Apple Association, said both apple trees and grape vines are stressed this summer from lack of rain.
 
With the apples, the drought won’t kill the trees, but it will affect the size of the fruit.
 
“The apples will be much smaller. They will be good and very sweet because there will be less water in them and more sugar,” he said.
 
It won’t be good financially for the apple growers either because the drought also will reduce the number of apples on the trees, cutting their yields. He said they shouldn’t have a problem with new trees planted in the spring because most growers irrigate these.
 
Maple trees won’t die from the drought, said Helen Thomas, executive director of the New York Maple Producers Association.
 
But, “if the water table is low and continues through the winter, the trees won’t have enough water to make as much sap in the spring,” she said. This means there could be a lot less syrup and other maple goodies next year.
 
What’s causing record dryness
 
David Thomas, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Buffalo, said the recent summers that could take the silver or bronze medal in the Drought Olympics were 2012, 1995 and 1988. 

In all three cases, the past droughts followed particularly dry years, with isolated or widespread droughts across Western New York in the March 1 to July 31 period, that were eased by later summer weather.
 
“2012 was also dry from spring into the summer,” Thomas said. “It was a little wetter than this year (with rain picking up in the summer). It helped (end) the drought, but we did have a dry period from March to July.”
 
The National Weather Service monitors droughts via multiple measures, with precipitation at airports an input that Thomas said shows this as the driest summer in 75 years. It’s been a confluence of factors to get here.
 
In Western New York, multi-year droughts like the one hitting California are prevented by the shear accumulation of snow that provides an annual replenishing of the water table and soil moisture.
 
Batavia experienced a reprieve from heavy snowfall in 2016 after back-to-back winters that brought blizzards, sustained deep freezes and snow-bound misery, but that wasn’t helpful below ground.
 
An upper-level wind pattern that frequently blew from the northeast prevented the “no doubters” of Gulf of Mexico-fueled spring rains that commonly add to the precipitation scoreboard.
 
“We didn’t have a really snowy winter, and that led into a dry spring that really caused the ground to dry out quickly across the region,” Thomas said. “The bright, sunny days through the spring and drier air allowed the drought conditions.”
 
Even the timing of weather systems hasn’t helped. Cold fronts have generally appeared over Western New York during the more atmospherically stable overnight hours, whereas an afternoon conflict with the daytime heat would lift the formation of clouds and thunderstorms.
 
“Without the sun’s heat, there’s not as many showers and thunderstorms,” Thomas said.
 
More than a little rain needed
 
This far into a drought, the region needs more than a sustained rainfall. Thomas said it will take months of above-normal precipitation to replenish the water table and have lawns, fields and trees recover.
 
“It won’t be one particular event or a week-long stretch,” he said.
 
A wayward hurricane ready to unload a flash of rain in Western New York, similar to the late stages of Hurricane Frances in 2004, wouldn’t be the solution. Thomas said a tropical storm would bring an abundance of rainfall, but forecasting one to pass over the region is next to impossible at this point.
 
And a flood doesn’t “fix” the problems of a drought. It just creates problems of its own.
 
At Fenton Farms in Batavia, Paul Fenton and his wife Gail have been fortunate to catch a portion of the handful of rain events that have punctuated the worst drought in their 30 years of farming an area between the city and Thruway. But each week the benefit has been weaker.
 
“It’s just evaporating so fast, the subsoil is absorbing the showers we do get, and with the high temperatures — we have three days of 85 degrees plus this week — the evaporation is just intense,” Fenton said. 

“We’re still producing nice stuff where it’s getting water, but the work to produce the product (is unprecedented). We’re irrigating seven days a week.”

Watertown Farmers' Market Benefits from Rainless Wednesdays

A story from one of my colleagues at the Watertown Daily Times.

Check it out http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/news03/watertown-farmers-market-benefited-from-rainless-wednesdays-20151008 here.

How to Deal with Wet Hay

Check out http://www.state-journal.com/spectrum/2013/07/06/agriculture-news-how-to-deal-with-hay-in-wet-conditions this story from the Frankfort, Kentucky newspaper.

Constant Rainfall Killing, Damaging Area Crops

June 28 flood warning map from the National Weather Service

Farmers in Central New York are hoping the weather gods try to find some middle ground for the rest of the growing season.

Last year at this time, farmers were irrigating their fields because rain just wouldn't fall. This year, crops are being drowned or subjected to the possibility of disease due to too much rain.

"It's a complete flip-flop from last year," said vegetable and fruit grower Tony Emmi, of Lysander. "There is no happy medium in this weather."

Mike Candella Jr., of Candella Farms in Marcy, Oneida County, agrees. He has lost 10 acres of sweet corn that drowned beneath about six feet of water. His acreage is between the Mohawk River and the Barge Canal and much of the rain in the Uitca-Rome area has emptied into the two bodies of water and then flooded his land.

"I've had about enough of this," Candella said. "Last year, we were irrigating like crazy. When will we have a normal year?"

The Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University states the average rainfall for Central New York in June is 3.56 inches. This year, the area saw about 6.8 inches -- making June 2013 the wettest June in more than 13 years.

Last year, farmers suffered through the 12th driest year on record, with rainfall totals for the first six months of 2012 coming in 3 1/2 inches below normal. June 2012 was the fifth consecutive month Central New York had below-normal precipitation, according to National Weather Service statistics.

Jason Turek, of the 4,000-acre Turek Farms in King Ferry, Cayuga County, said the weather "has reversed 180 degrees from last year." His thousands of acres of vegetables and 2,000 acres of sweet corn suffered from severe drought last year as "we had less than a half an inch of rain" in June.

"This year, we've had 10 inches of rain since the first of June," Turek said.

His biggest problem with the rain is he will have less produce to sell this year because the rain kept him out of the fields and he couldn't finish his planting. A few hundred acres will remain unplanted.

He also said "a lot of the green beans and squash have died as they sit in super saturated soil." The Tureks grow sweet corn, cabbage, winter and summer squash, green beans and pumpkins.

Candella lost a good amount of berries from the flooding, while Emmi said his big problems are an overabundance of weeds and fighting fungus diseases on the wet crops.

And while area residents look forward to that first local sweet corn and other veggies, don't expect crops to come in the same time as last year. Emmi said the rain has slowed the growth of many crops and "everything is about a week behind." He grows peppers, sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, winter and summer squash and cabbage.

PLEASE SEE OTHER STORY POSTED ON EMPIRE STATE FARMING TODAY (Sunday July 7) FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO APPLY FOR CROP LOSS HELP FROM THE USDA.

Weather Causes Problems for Farmers Across NYS

The weather has been tricky for farmers in the last few weeks, with days and days of rain and not much sun.

Here's what the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Services reports for the week of June 10-16:

WEATHER:  The week was rather active across New York state, with various types of weather affecting the area.  High pressure controlled the weather across the region on Sunday and Monday. A low pressure system brought locally heavy rain to the region from Tuesday through early Wednesday, with rainfall accumulations reaching between a half inch and two inches.

Another low pressure system came into the region with later in the week with more locally heavy rain late Thursday into early Friday. Rainfall accumulation from Thursday into Friday totaled another half inch to 2 inches across the region. Temperatures for the week were generally below normal, with highs in the 70s to around 80 on dry days, and temperatures ranged from the upper 50s to the upper 60s on rainy days.

CROPS:  There were 2 days suitable for fieldwork.  Soil moisture was rated 30 percent adequate and 70 percent surplus. Condition of oats was 20 percent fair, 68 percent good, and 12 percent excellent.  Winter wheat was rated 1 percent poor, 15 percent fair, 65 percent good, and 19 percent excellent.  Hay crops were 7 percent poor, 25 percent fair, 54 percent good, and 14 percent excellent.

The first clover timothy cutting was 60 percent complete compared to 66 percent in 2012.  The first alfalfa cutting was 74 percent complete compared to 78 percent in 2012.  The first cutting of grass silage was 75 percent complete compared to 84 percent last year. Corn was 93 percent planted compared to 97 percent in 2012 and behind the 95 percent five year average. Potatoes were 90 percent planted compared to 96 percent in 2012 and was below the five year average of 97 percent. 

Soybeans were 68 percent planted compared to 92 percent in 2012 and behind the five year average of 87 percent.  

In Madison County, wet weather prevented field work, and many low, poorly drained areas were under water. Earlier planted corn looked good, while corn planted later did not. Some second cut grass stands in the northern part of Madison County were ready to be harvested.

In Cayuga County, fields were flooded and wet conditions delayed spraying. Field work came to a halt in Cortland County due to wet conditions.  The soil was too saturated to support equipment without damaging the field.  Plowing continued between periods of rain to turn over hay fields after first cutting.

Corn planting intentions in Jefferson County changed every day due to wet conditions. Many hoped to finish planting soybeans as soon as the weather cooperated. With well over 5 inches of rain for the month, farmers in St. Lawrence County had few opportunities to make first cut hay silage and little opportunity to make dry hay. No additional crops were planted in Seneca County due to an additional 2 inches of rain. The lack of dry weather created additional problems.


FRUIT:  Apple conditions for the week were 23 percent fair, 53 percent good, and 24 percent excellent.  Peaches were 17 percent fair, 80 percent good, and 3 percent excellent.  Pears were 14 percent fair, 79 percent good, and 7 percent excellent.

Sweet cherries were 6 percent poor, 22 percent fair, 68 percent good, and 4 percent excellent. Tart cherries were 8 percent poor, 39 percent fair, 52 percent good, and 1 percent excellent. Grapes were 6 percent fair, 86 percent good, and 8 percent excellent.

VEGETABLES:  Sweet corn was 73 percent planted, compared to 79 percent in 2012, and was below the 88 percent five year average. Sweet corn was 38 percent fair, 58 percent good, and 4 percent excellent.  Onions were 22 percent fair, 71 percent good and 7 percent excellent.

Snap beans were 38 percent planted, compared to 64 percent in 2012, and behind the 66 percent five year average. Cabbage was 83 percent planted, compared to 89 percent in 2012, and below the 86 percent five year average.

In Cayuga County, flooded fields prevented farmers from planting corn and beans.

LIVESTOCK:  Pasture was rated 3 percent poor, 18 percent fair, 60 percent good, and 19 percent excellent.

Rain Floods Some Fields

Rain is certainly needed to help crops grow.

But it seems Central New York has been getting picked on by the rain gods.

Take a look at this farmer's field in Madison County. And believe me, I've seen worse. In Chenango County on Friday, I saw a field of corn in a low-lying area completely under water.

Last year it was drought, now all this rain. Let's hope the weather straightens out and brings forth great vegetables and fruits soon.

Rain Dampens Farmer's Harvest in North Carolina

Wish I had seen this yesterday. Perfect post for April Fools Day.

Enjoy all!