From the Fields - Ed Sills

By Ed Sills, Sutter County organic field crops farmer

The good news is the irrigation water prospects for 2023 are the best in many years. The South Sutter Water District allocation is 2 acre-feet per acre, with allocation starting June 1. That means that water use prior to that date will not go against our allocation.

The bad news is that often with these good water years, we cannot get into the fields until much later in the spring. And our winter grain crops were hurt by local ponding of water in the fields. Last year we were planting organic safflower the first week of March. This year we started April 12, so we are at least a month later. Hopefully, we won’t have any significant rain from here on out so that plantings are not delayed further.

Because of the good water supply, we have increased our organic rice acreage about 25%. One of the methods we use to control broadleaf weeds is drying the fields at about 25 days for about two weeks. This often works very well, but it delays maturity about 10 days. So if we are planting late May and even into June this year, we risk a wet, muddy harvest with the greater possibility of rainstorms in late fall. We’ve “been there, done that” and can put tracks on all the harvest equipment. But it can turn into a mess. The joke is that we will all be eating turkey sandwiches on Thanksgiving in the combines.

We have been able to field dry most of our organic corn and popcorn the past few years with earlier plantings. This year I will need to make sure we have our bin heaters tuned up for drying wet corn. Hopefully, we will have a warm and dry September and October, but we will be prepared for whatever Mother Nature throws our way.