Local farmers continue to prepare for the spring planting season despite below average temperatures this week.
Tim Lyden raises livestock and grows corn, wheat, soybeans and more on his Logan County farm. He hasn’t planted any crops yet just in case there’s another frost — like the one predicted for Monday night, he said.
“You know if you live in Ohio long enough it just keeps changing,” Lyden said of the weather. “And it changed again.”
Lyden and his volunteer workers have been outside for the past couple of weeks, he said. But the weather brought them inside on Monday.
“When the weather hits, we want to be ready to go on the first day,” Lyden said.
His animals may be put out to pasture a couple of weeks late if temperatures continue to stay below average, Lyden said.
He may also lose some grass that he’s seeded, he said
“If that seedling gets up there and gets a hard frost on that,” he said. “I could lose that.”
Lyden’s son TJ works as a supplier for farmers at the Heritage Cooperative in West Mansflield.
“They’re going to wait for the soil temperature to warm up around 50 degrees,” TJ Lyden said.
His customers haven’t been impacted by the cold weather, he said, but are cautious of rain extending into May.
“Another two weeks and people are going to start getting a little nervous,” Tom Lyden said.
Lyden wants to start planting around the end of April, beginning of May, he said.
“There’s plenty of time for that to happen,” he said.
Most of TJ Lyden’s customers won’t plan to start planting until then as well, he said.
“As long as they can get some corn in by the middle of May usually we’ve still got chance for maximum yields,” he said.