Recent weather impacts local farmer’s soybean crops on the Shore

Snow Hill, MD– On the shore, local farmers are growing crops like corn and soybeans.

Virgil Shockley, owner of Oak Shelter Farm in Snow Hill, shared how his crops are doing with the recent weather fluctuation.

“The soybean crop right now on Delmarva, I would say was probably maybe 60%, at best, of the average of what we normally have here.” said Virgil.

Shockley shared that choosing when to plant corn and soybeans is always a roll of the dice.

“The weather has been, I won’t say predictable, that’s the wrong word. But it’s not been great, but it hasn’t been terrible either. We’ve been getting a little bit too much rain sometimes,” said Shockley.

WMDT’s meteorologist, Jake Grant explained the weather Delmarva has been experiencing.

“We’ve been above average with rain fall from April, May, and now into June, and hoping that continues into the summer, so that we can keep it into the growing and harvest as well,” said Grant.

Shockley shared a farmer saying, “You can hear the corn grow overnight.” He said that has summed up this growing so far.

“When it hits 90 degrees and you get a temperature of 75 at night, you can literally hear the corn grow.”

Grant also highlighted what farmers can do to prepare for the first few weeks of summer.

“One of the things they can do is always follow along with the WMDT weather app,” said Grant. “When we’re looking and we see a long-term period where we’re going to see the heat begin to spike, that typically means we have high pressure building in, which quiets things down. That’s an indication that temperatures are going to get a lot warmer– the ground is going to start to dry out.”