Rain creates mud problem for Knox farmer

KNOX, Ind. --- The rain from this week has turned a Knox farmer’s sweet corn field into a muddy mess.

Bill Scherf, owner of Yellow River Farms, has been farming all of his life. He is a professional at farming sweet corn, green beans, and many other crops. But the rain from this past week is slowing down his production.

“We should’ve been done today 45 minutes to an hour. Today it took us two hours today to get it done,” Scherf said.

Thick mud, almost two fists thick, has taken place of farming ground at the farm. The mud is so thick that’s during today’s pick of the season, Scherf said he had to use two tractors to get in and out of the fields.

And it’s not only mud causing problems, large bodies of water have drowned parts of his sweet corn crop. Jeff Burbrink, from Elkhart County Purdue Extension office, said that’s not good.

“They get soggy they don’t breath well,” Burbrink said. “There’s a chance for bacterial infection and that sort of thing to set in so you basically can’t sell produce that’s under water.”

Burbrink said he hopes the forecast cooperates for the rest of the season.

“A good weather scenario would be if we had about one inch of rain per week solid type of weather pattern that we’d love to see return,” Burbrink said.

Scherf said, back at his farm, it was worse to work in some places than others but not impossible. He said he was still able to pick six bins of corn, and will continue to even it starts raining again.

“We pick the corn every morning, rain or shine,” Scherf said. “If the tractor can’t get through the field then we have pick by hand if we have to.”