DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) — The 2023 growing season has been off to an above-normal start in Ohio, with oats and soybeans planted and emerging from the soil higher this year than the 5-year average.

The year began with well above average precipitation in some parts of Ohio and has since declined to below-normal numbers in recent months, but isolated heavy showers over the past weekend have left some farmers unable to work in the fields.

Amanda Bennett, Ohio State University Miami Extension Agriculture and Natural Resource Educator, said, “That has put us out. We’ve got areas that are completely saturated that we won’t be able to get planted for quite some time.”

One local farm has planted nearly 80% of their crops as of right now, and plans on getting more in the ground.

Glenn Monnin, Owner of Monnin Fruit Farms, said, “These are new strawberry plants and we planted about another acre of them, and I’m still not done. I’m going to put in some more when I get a chance once it dries up.

For Monnin, some of his raspberry and strawberry crops are damaged from the winter storm that brought well below-freezing temperatures in December.

Monnin said, “We were out there working in the fields and every day it was kind of mild, and then all of a sudden it dropped to ten below zero and those plants weren’t acclimated to that cold yet, so it had a big effect on us.”

Planted corn is near the same percentage as last year at 26 percent but needs to be in the ground by early June to qualify for crop insurance.

Bennett said, “We have a June 5th deadline that we’d like to work towards, so we are always kind of looking to that deadline and hoping we make that.”