Spring 2014
We apologize that we haven't been good at updating this spring, so here's whats been going on at Frontier Family Farms. Considering how much snow we got in the winter, it was melting at a nice pace and the fields were looking great, until the weather turned on us again and started raining day after day. We were very frustrated, as were most of the farmers around this area, wondering if it was going to be a duplicate of last year. Not only is farming a way of living, but it is also a hobby that we love very much and the thought of prevent planting was very hard to think of doing again. Luckily, we started planting on April 22nd and with a lot of off days in there from the precipitation, we were able to complete planting on May 22nd. Compared to some years this is considered late, but it's usually within a couple of days of there. We were very glad that the weather seemed to be in our favor again and they crops were growing beautifully. Cole and Katie were able to drive to Chicago last weekend and the crops that they saw in Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa didn't seem to compare to how wonderful they looked in our area. It was a wonderful feeling to finally have a "normal" growing season and be ahead of the surrounding states. That all changed Monday night when a strong storm system moved into our area and dumped 1-3 inches within a couple of hours and had upwards of 60 mph winds. There was quite a bit of standing water in the low areas, but by Tuesday afternoon it was soaking in nicely. Tuesday night another storm moved in and brought another 2-4 inches with it and high winds again. Luckily the wind hasn't seemed to affect much but we then had ponds in our fields. Once again in the early hours this morning we got another storm with a few more inches of rain. Overall in 72 hours we have gotten 6-9 inches on our fields, depending on their location. Now instead of ponds, we have lakes! The 5 day weather forecast shows another 1 inch in the next 5 days, but at least the temperatures are supposed to stay hot. Here is an example of one of our "lakes".
