After a cold and snowy start to April, you will see more farmers go out to their fields to get their work done for the upcoming planting season. The Wisconsin Crop Progress and Condition Report showed that farmers had almost 3.5 days suitable for field work last week, up just a touch from the week before. Spring tillage (22 percent complete) and the planting of oats (19 percent full) and potatoes (25 percent complete) are all five to nine days ahead of last year’s pace and one to five days ahead of the five-year average.

As conditions have allowed, many area farmers use this time to plant other crops, haul manure, and apply fertilizer. For Jeremy Heim of Heim Brothers Custom out of Algoma, this is a busy time for preparing the fields for their own farm and others across the area. One of the practices they employ during this time is low-disturbance manure application on fields that have been freshly planted or have some cover crops still sitting on it. He says it has been a great way for them to provide much-needed nutrients to growing crops while being sensitive to runoff concerns.

Heim will discuss low-disturbance manure application as part of Peninsula Pride Farms’ first conservation conversation on April 30th at 5:30 p.m.