BROTHERS LOOK FORWARD TO SPRING

Farm shop makes work go smoothly

By LORI BERGLUND

DUNCOMBE — Brothers

Joe and Bill Geis have seen a lot of planting seasons together.

Through late-season snows, early springs, floods and drought, there isn’t much they haven’t worked through in a lifetime of farming in Webster County.

With their late dad Kenneth, the brothers grew up planting corn and soybeans four rows at a time, lugging bags of seed and hoping that the weather would hold to get every field planted on time.

Today, the brothers have separate farming operations but work closely together. Of course, things have changed a little. They plant corn 24 rows at a time, while the soybean planter takes a 16-row swath. Seed tenders have replaced the bags, but they still find themselves hoping every afternoon that the weather will hold so that they can get every field planted on time.

With the spring season arriving, farmers everywhere are talking about much the same things, input prices, and the weather.

“Probably our biggest concern this year is moisture,” said Bill Geis. “It’s abnormally dry. Last year it was dry going into the spring, but this year I think it’s even worse.”

While there have been plentiful snowfalls in the winter season, the moisture that is received just doesn’t get into the soil as needed, he noted.

“It all goes down the river,” Bill Geis said.

While dry, the 2022 season was not a bad one for the Geis brothers.

“Yields last year were average,” Bill Geis said. “They weren’t great, but they were pretty good.”

In 2022, the brothers finished planting both corn and soybeans in the first two weeks of May.

See GEIS, Page 8D

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