14-05-2025
Recent rainfall and how it's affecting our farmers
SHADY SPRING, WV (WVNS) — After recent rainfall throughout southern West Virginia, farmers are cautiously hopeful that this year's hay season may be salvageable.
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The 2024 hay season really wasn't much of one.
A poor first cutting and no hope of a second forced farmers to go out of state to buy hay to feed their livestock.
While this year has seen a decent amount of rain, it's unfortunately not enough to get the soil back to the level of moisture it was before last year's drought.
Keith Richmond, County Executive Director for the Raleigh County Farm Service Agency, said the first cutting at least will be small.
'One of the problems that we're seeing is that the grass is already heading out. The cool weather is really what's affected it. We've had sufficient rain, nothing like we need, but we've had enough to maintain. But the cool weather's held the grass back, it's heading out short and it looks like it's gonna be another first short cutting,' said Richmond.
Richmond said we will need a lot more rainfall – steady, consistent, near weekly rainfall for farmers to have any hope of a second cutting in the fall.
But he said unless things change, atmospherically speaking, we may fall back into the same drought patterns as last year.
Richmond said farmers need to be prepared.
'We're just now hitting the D0 on the drought monitor. We have to hit D3 before we, before it kicks in for, like it did last year. But right now there's nothing available. We're just encouraging people to make sure they got their crop reports to us so we have that ready to go. And then just do your normal maintenance,' said Richmond.
Richmond said the FSA programs that helped farmers last year will become available once the drought stage in the area reaches D3 or the Extreme Drought Stage.
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He advised farmers to fertilize, put out lime, and keep an eye on their fields for any drastic changes.
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