Weathering the weather
BY ALYSSA MEIER
Editor
For area farmers, the end of the 2018 harvest means counting losses and hoping for smoother sailing next year.
“I’ve gone through just about every emotion you can imagine,” Rick Tweeten of R & R Seed Farms said.
Tweeten, who farms small grains north of Washburn, said the past five months have proven to be challenging for local farmers, who have grown hopeful over conditions one week, just to have expectations dashed.
“Things were looking really good until that hail and that 100-mile an hour wind that we had,” Tweeten said of a storm that ripped through the area in late June. “It just beat everything to the ground and it didn’t come back.”
Tweeten said wind and hail tore apart local crops, and some farm structures, but that there was still hope for a good season. Then when a drought hit central North Dakota in July, badly-damaged crops struggled for moisture that was nowhere to be found. Tweeten said early-season crops fared better than those harvested later in the fall.
“The wheat crop was a good average crop for the most part,” Tweeten said. “The later season crops, the corn and soybeans and pinto beans, they struggled for the lack of rain.”
