Lack of rain causes Minnesota farmers to worry about crops
LINO LAKES, Minn. — Wednesday marked 34 straight days without measurable rainfall, a dry streak that has Minnesota farmers worried about what's to come.
Butch Cardinal has had to spend a lot of time watering his crops at All Good Organics in Lino Lakes.
The farm has irrigation, so Cardinal's not suffering too bad in the drought, but he will if it continues through winter.
"We want snow," Cardinal said. "We want ground cover. We want moisture in the soil, because we don't want to be coming into the spring in a drought. It's hard to get things growing in the spring without moisture in the soil."
Flooding in the spring has made this a difficult year.
"Way too much rain," Cardinal said. "It was hard on our pumpkins and winter squash. We lost about 80 percent."
On a positive note, the rain eliminated drought conditions in the state. That's no longer the case.
"Now about 97 percent of the state is considered abnormally dry with almost 3/4 of it dealing with drought," said WCCO meteorologist Chris Shaffer.
"I'm getting to the point where I think we're never going to see normal," Cardinal said. "We're going to see weather extremes and we're just going to have to learn how to deal with it or cope with it or adjust to it."
Cardinal is adapting by planting cover crops deeper in the soil so they can reach the moisture that's there, and he's staying versatile.
"Our potato crop was good," he said. "Our onions were good, but we've also had pumpkins fail, winter squash fail, tomatoes fail, so I'm trying to grow several crops so when one doesn't do so well, another one is."
Butch says it can be tough, but he persists. Like all farmers, resilience is in his DNA.