FULTON COUNTY, OHIO, Ohio — You may have noticed a lot of tractors out in farm fields around the area. Corn and soybean crops are finally getting planted after a delay of six weeks.
It's not as bad as in 2019 when heavy spring rain pushed planting back to June and still, the crops had good yields that year.
Keith Truckor is a long-time farmer in Fulton County. He said he prefers to begin planting in April.
"After a mild winter, I was eager to get out," Truckor said.
But Mother Nature had other ideas with record rainfall that month. And then, more rain during the first half of May.
Now, it seems things have settled down. Truckor started planting corn crops last Saturday.
"It was tough, you know," he said. "I don’t have much patience and typically a farmer doesn’t have patience. We want the thing to be right and we want to go when the time is right and it was a challenge mentally.”
As long as heavy rain holds off Truckor will be on his tractor from sunrise to sunset for the next 10 days, planting the corn and soybeans.
According to Truckor, the rule of thumb is May 15 to get started.
"Anytime after that, you start losing a little bit of yield," Truckor said. "But we can catch up with that and ideal conditions. We don’t like to plant too much in June. That’s when you really see a drop off in yield but we are OK if we can get it done next ten days.”
Some farmers are still in a holding pattern, depending on their soil type and what county avoided heavy rain in northwest Ohio or southeast Michigan.
Once the crops are planted it all comes down to weather and how bad the Canadian wildfire smoke is this summer into the fall.
MORE FROM WTOL 11 NEWS: