Dry conditions impacting farmers late into the season

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Dry conditions impacting farmers

The day's local, regional and national news, detailed events and late-breaking stories are presented by the ABC 6 News Team, along with the latest sports, weather updates including the extended forecast.

(ABC 6 News) – Low humidity, high temps, and strong winds, led to a few grass fires on Wednesday, but the conditions are also having an effect on local farmers.

“We had so much rain in the first few months and then since August, we haven’t had much, August, September the showers pretty much shut off,” Cathleen Bleckeberg said.

Bleckeberg was one of the vendors at the Albert Lea Farmers Market.

She said the recent conditions is shrinking some of her crops.

“My sweet corn, it usually gets fat when it’s ready to pick, this year it got ready but they’re very thin.”

In comparison to last year which was also considerably dry, she said this year’s harvest was much smaller than last year.

“If it doesn’t rain, we’d water, but this year we were expecting rain and it didn’t do it so we didn’t have our irrigation system set up.”

This year’s harvest won’t be a complete bust for Bleckeberg as this farming season comes to an end.

She’ll harvest what’s available and get ready for next year.