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As the days slowly turn much warmer and the trees change to deep summer greens, farmers across Tennessee prepare for this year's cropping season. They repair hay balers parked over the winter in metal sheds, hoping for just one more year of use and a bumper crop.
However, there is one word in the previous sentence that seems to be used a lot this growing season. It is the word "hoping" that seems to be spoken quite often around farmsteads in the Volunteer State. Farmers are "hoping" for numerous things. They, of course, want prices for their crops to be good, more production from what they plant, drought to stay away this year, some dry weather on hay harvesting days, and hope most of all to just survive another year.
The last couple of growing seasons have not been all that bad for our farmers if you overlook the floods of 2010 and 2011, along with dry weather in parts of East Tennessee in 2011. This year no one can predict what is going to happen in the form of weather after a winter that resembled spring in January and a spring that was more like an early summer. I'm just hoping we don't have snow at the end of July and a blizzard for Halloween.
This year farmers are planting with a lot of hope, which is what all of them seem to have. We are
Article source: http://www.dnj.com/article/20120521/OPINION02/305210014
