Planting winds down after cool, wet season

REGIONAL -- This planting season started with wet, rainy periods which created conditions that kept farmers from their fields. Now, they’re taking them back.
    The temperature, along with the rain, resulted in cold, damp fields that made it impossible to plant in April. Combined with the lack of sunshine, farmers who did attempt to plant early may now be looking at crusting seeds, emergence problems and the compaction of furrows.
    “Farmers have to wait,” said Mike Witt, the ISU Extension crop specialist for southwest Iowa. “People get impatient.”
    When they do, their crops suffer.
    “Excess rain just tends to throw a monkey wrench in it. You want good soil moisture,” Witt said.
    Randy Pryor, a farmer and auctioneer in Woodbine held off to plant until better weather came along.
    Pryor has been driving tractors since he was nine. He grew up on a farm and as a child, his father would put Pryor and his brother to work on the family farm.
    Before he graduated, he knew he would be following in his father’s footsteps.