By CRAIG FREILICH

Drought conditions this past growing season seriously reduced crop yields throughout St. Lawrence County, and might even cause some dairy farmers go out of business.

“It could easily be the last straw for some,” said Kitty O’Neil, agronomist and Cornell Cooperative Extension Regional Field Crops and Soils Specialist for St. Lawrence County

O’Neil fears that some dairy farmers with diminished yields “combined with a really low milk price will be cash-strapped. That will affect their ability to purchase feed. It could get very, very tight.”

But Canton dairy farmer and county Farm Bureau President Jon Greenwood doesn’t think the situation is so bad. “I don’t know of anybody that hard hit in St. Lawrence County,” he said.

“What I hear is that farms in St. Lawrence County are OK, but it really depends on where you’re located. We’re in not near as bad shape as Jefferson County,” Greenwood said.

Farmers in St. Lawrence County will be eligible for emergency loans from the USDA since much of the North Country has been declared a disaster area.

There’s little doubt that the dry weather that persisted through the summer has affected crops, especially hay.

“Our crops are certainly yielding less than normal, particularly in damage to hay,” O’Neil said. “It’s half to less of normal for most seasons in recent years.”

“Yes, hay is down,” said Greenwood, who grows all the forage and corn for grain for his 1,300 milking cows. “My first cut of hay was down, but I had nice second, third and fourth cuts this year.”

St. Lawrence County is so vast it is hard to generalize, “so there will be fields that are better and worse,” O’Neil said.

“But we’ve all been dry. We started out behind” due to relatively light snowfall last winter, and since then rainfall has been sparse.

Three to three-and-a-half inches of rain a month in summer is typical, “but we’ve been nowhere near that,” said O’Neil. There has been some rain more recently, but not enough to bring us up to par, she said.

“Out Hammond way, some farmers had it so dry all summer that they didn’t have much hay production,” O’Neil said.

“Generally the first cutting was down across the county, but it depends on where you are. The closer to the (St. Lawrence) river, the more rain there has been, Greenwood said. In spite of that, he says that the hardest hit spot in S. Lawrence County has been around Hammond, where the river widens at Lake Ontario. That is also where the more drought-ridden area into Jefferson County begins.

As farmers approached the time to prepare corn silage, O’Neil said production would be low as well, “but not as low as hay.”

“The corn crop looks decent but we won’t really know” until it’s time to bring it in, Greenwood said. “The lack of rain could mean lack of ear-fill.”

“It could look bad and then we’d get enough rain to keep things going,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get a good fall, no early frost, and we’ll get our corn off in a timely manner.”

When we spoke with him, Greenwood said he was about to start chopping some of his corn for silage, “earlier than normal. It will dry a lot quicker than normal, with the lack of moisture in the ground and the heat” we had this summer.

O’Neil agreed that the silage corn has been drying quickly, “so the silage window will be narrow and the optimal moisture content will be hard to achieve,” she said.

Soybean and corn grain harvests will not be affected as much, “but I imagine they’ll be less than typical, too,” O’Neil said.

One thing that gives O’Neil hope is that “some farmers ended up with a forage surplus for 2015, with some very good yields” allowing good stores of hay, haylage and corn silage.

She said that those fortunate farmers “will be able to suffer through this year, but all farms are not in that position.”

All of St. Lawrence County is in a Moderate Drought Zone, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor map at http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?NY