Rain, flooding can cause difficult conditions for farmers

The rain and possible flooding for many local counties is not good news for farmers.

Some Champaign County farmers say this has been the wettest year they’ve ever experienced.

One farmer is dealing with difficult conditions and another says he welcomes the rain.

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Tom Nisonger was able to get his crops planted, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still seeing difficulties.

“We’re at mercy of the weather,” he said. “The corn as small as it is, we could have slugs. A lot of problems coming in with the corn.”

Down the road from him in Saint Paris, Old Soul’s Farm benefits from all the rain.

Plant manager Nick Kaczkowski explains how the farm collects water from the roof to hydrate its plants.

“We channel it down through a gutter system into our holding tanks and then from our holding tanks we pull from our holding tanks and then we recirculate them, add nutrient and then back into our plants,” he said. “Anything that we can catch, we eventually reuse and we’re very slow to use all of our water.”

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For some farmers all the rain can be headache, but Nisonger says sometimes all you can do is wait it out.

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