By Carrie Muehling

FAIRBURY – Nice weather has allowed farmers to do some extra work in and around the fields this fall.

Many farmers are finishing up fertilizer and anhydrous applications, as well as cleaning up winter annuals.  Tillage and tiling are other projects farmers complete when the good weather extends late into the year.   In addition, many are revisiting 2012 and planning for 2013 with conversations about fertilizer programs and seed sales.

“Just kind of over all analysis of where things have been and where we want them to go and what we need to do to get them there on a fertilizing, seed and chemical program type of route,” said Brad Schmidgall with Brandt Consolidated in Fairbury.  “It’s never too early to go ahead and start planning for 2013 and as we wrap up towards the end of the year here, a lot of the talk is definitely focused that direction.”

Schmidgall recommends farmers order seed early to get top varieties and hybrids again this year.  As far as the supply for other inputs, some of that may depend on decisions made by the Army Corps of Engineers concerning water flow to the Mississippi River.

“That could, coupled with the drought that we’ve been having, could really affect the river level and continue to actually bring barge traffic to a halt,” said Schmidgall.  “Those kind of things are outlying in the future to keep an eye on and watch, but so far, everything to date has come through just fine and ideally we’d just like to see a number of showers come through the area before the ground freezes for the winter and that may alleviate all of that down the road.”

Carrie Muehling can be reached at carrie@wjbc.com.