Alden, NY — Warm temperatures near 80 and sunshine for some of the week meant farmers were busy at work, taking advantage of every nice day. That's because it was less than a month ago that fields were covered with snow. Then just like that it went from winter to summer.
"Somehow skipped Spring along the way somehow it seems," said Andrew Milleville, owner of AM Farms and a grain farmer. "Main crops are corn, soybeans and wheat. We also do some oats and hay."
He says they have been about a week delayed in planting this Spring and should finish planting later this month of May.
"We've had a little bit of a late start to the Spring and the extended winter that we had but... we've had a good stretch here where we could get a lot of stuff in the ground," Milleville said.
And over to Alden at the Oles Family Farm, Promised Land CSA, is now having its first outdoor harvest of the season this week.
"Asparagus is the first outdoor thing we've harvested and then the garlic greens," Ben Oles, third generation at the Oles Family Farm, said.
Ben Oles says they are running about one to two weeks delayed with some crops, including asparagus, and a little longer with lettuce.
"Things outside like the head lettuce and the salad greens, the green type stuff that you normally have outside, we'd be harvesting here next week, we're two to three weeks out on that harvest," Oles explained.
But he also says everything looks to catch up moving forward.
"Anything that's going to be planted from now on will pretty much be on schedule as normal," he said.
And the weather will still be closely watched of course. "We like 1 to 2 inches of rain a week, warm days like this and 50 degree nights are nice," Oles said.
"It's always the weather after you plant things that ultimately depends on how we do," Milleville said.