74 years ago

I've been saying for the last several years that our springs are returning to the colder periods I remember when I was a kid.
We had 4 tenths rain May 27th and now after midnight on the 28th the temperature is 44 degrees...I hope it doesn't clear off tonight or the next few nights, which could bring the temperatures down in the creek bottoms into the 30s where the corn and soybeans are growing.

I always remember my mom telling me about my parents wedding anniversary on May 28, 1947.
Dad cultivated a field of corn the day before and on the morning of the 28th there were several inches of snow on the ground with the corn leaves peeking through the snow.

This was before farmers knew about the growing point of corn which would have still been below ground. A few farmers did not replant...their corn sent up new growth and they had good corn yields that fall...whereas most of the farmers thought their corn that froze off above ground had to be disked up and replanted.
Some of the old timers told me that the replanted corn didn't do as well as the corn that was left alone to regrow.

Soybeans are a different story with the growing point on top of that species of plant. There weren't many beans planted back in the 1940s and I never heard any stories about them - if any farmers had soybeans they probably had not yet emerged...if they had emerged then the farmer would have had to replant them.

I tell this story to different people each year around this time and some of them think I'm making up the story...well here is the proof.


Koester farm place May 28, 1947

Koester Snowball bush


Peas & Radishes in Mildred Horbach's garden in town


Ohrt yard along Madison Street


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