DECATUR, Ill. (DTN) -- Hail hurts. So far this season, three separate hail events have battered portions of Tyler Rath's crop.

Adding insult to the injury, volumes of rain made for a muddy and chaotic English pea harvest. Ruts left from harvesters, ponding and drowned out spots have the Belgrade, Minnesota, farmer wishing the weather would just settle down.

"On the bright side, I'm not chasing irrigators around like I would be normally," said Rath on July 8. "Our fields are saturated. But many of our soils are sandy and here, we are always one week away from a drought," he said.

"All things considered, most of my crop looks good -- with the exception of fields that have been hit with weather. It just seems like we have more microclimates to deal with every year," he added.

In Finksburg, Maryland, Chris Weaver could use more moisture. Unseasonably high temperatures and wind have made for a tough season so far.

"The rain we received this week was so needed. But dig down 6 inches and the soil is like powder," he said. On July 9, the U.S. Drought Monitor pegged Carroll County, where Weaver farms, at D2 (severe drought) status.

Weaver and Rath are participating in DTN's View From the Cab feature this season. The ongoing reports cover crop conditions and rural conditions. The goal of the series is to provide insight into what it takes to farm in different growing regions and give a more intimate look at the profession of farming. This is the 22nd year for the View From the Cab feature and the 10th report for the 2026 growing season. Find the previous write up here: https://www.dtnpf.com/….

While this might seem a time for a mid-season stretch, there's little downtime or coasting for these farmers. This time of year, the sprayer becomes like a second home since both farmers have high-intensity crop production systems that focus on delivering what the crop needs when it needs it. In addition, Rath has organic specialty crops that require multiple passes over the field to mechanically control weeds. All of those operations become more complex when the weather doesn't cooperate.

DTN Ag Meteorologist John Baranick said conditions are likely to continue to cook along for both of these farmers at least through the first half of the coming week.

"In Minnesota, and through the Northern Plains, it will be hot with high temperatures in the lower to mid-90s that could bake the crop if it's been damaged or stressed out in other ways," said Baranick. "The heat will slowly relent and we should finish out closer to normal at the end of the week with a front that will come through and could bring some showers and thunderstorms to end the heatwave. Right now, it is hard to say if they'll get any rainfall out of it, or if they'll have to watch for another round of severe weather."

Baranick said Weaver's farming area can expect temperatures in the mid-90s again. "Overnight low temperatures are likely to stay in the 70s for several days, continuing to stress crops overnight. They'll be waiting for that front to make it through either late week or weekend to bring temperatures back down closer to normal. Showers and thunderstorms should be expected with it, but no guarantees that we'll see anything substantial out of it," Baranick said.

The drive to continually make farm improvements is true for these farmers, as it is for most farm businesses. Read on to learn the current state of the crop on these farms and to see what's on their wish list for future seasons.

CHRIS WEAVER: FINKSBURG, MARYLAND

July brought temperatures in triple digits for Weaver and it has meant working some night shifts. He has a policy of shutting down sprayers when temperatures exceed 80 degrees.

Some of the 116-day corn is tasseling, which makes the sprayer breakdown even more painful as he's wanting to get fungicide on in a timely fashion. There's also some postemergence herbicide applications to finish in soybeans. Unfortunately, the sprayer snafu was followed by a broken hydraulic line on another machine and a blown tire on the rotary mower.

"Some days I know what a road mechanic feels like," he admitted. Fixing is just part of farming and Weaver feels fortunate that he and his farm crew can tackle many repairs.

What they can't fix is hot weather. The 1.25-inch rain that came on July 3 was a welcome relief, but the heat has already taken a toll on corn and soybeans, Weaver reported.

"Our small grain yields are off. Our hay is off. Everything in general has been off. We had heat early in the season, followed by frost, and now we are back to really hot. Mother Nature hasn't been our friend this year.

"But the good Lord blessed us with this much-needed rain and it is going to help. It's going to cool the crop off," Weaver said. "The cloudy conditions we are experiencing actually are making me happy because that has helped some of the water soak into the ground," he added. Large portions of the East Coast took a weather beating this past week and he was also feeling lucky that none of his farm fields were hit by those devastating events.

Weaver is prone to optimism, but he plants sunflowers as a backup to erase gloomy thoughts. Those plantings were scheduled for this week.

"Sunflowers put a smile on my face. The kids might sell a couple of them here and there, but mostly they are just nice to look at and pretty," he said.

The first sweet corn of the year is just about ready, too. Most of that is given away to landlords and friends.

He's waiting for a bit more rain to plant cover crops mixture of buckwheat, sunn hemp, radish, turnip and multiple clover and mustard varieties into barley stubble. He's hoping rye harvest starts next week -- that crop is sold to a distillery.

Weaver keeps his boots in the field scouting. He's beginning to see some feeding by Japanese beetle, but so far they have not been economic. He's also watching for Mexican bean beetle, which can cause severe feeding on soybean foliage. The copper-colored insect resembles a ladybug with 16 black spots.

"Our Brix levels are so high in soybeans that it offers us some pest protection, but I'm still keeping my eyes open," Weaver said. Brix levels measure the percentage of dissolved sugars and minerals in plant sap.

Tar spot usually shows up in this region later in the season, but Weaver has his eye on the national tar spot map to avoid surprises. Southern rust hit some portions of Maryland last year, so he'll also aggressively monitor for it.

If the sprayer continues to have problems, Weaver will make a case to swap it for his ultimate farm wish list item. He'd really like a telehandler. But in the spirit of cooperation, if he had to pick one item, he's going to pick a grain cart.

"My farm crew has been lobbying for a grain cart for several years. I tend to think of grain carts as compaction tools. We've always built roads through fields to position trucks. But I'm probably going to have to give in and get a grain cart at some point," he said.

TYLER RATH: BELGRADE, MINNESOTA

As June wound to a close, Rath's preparations for pea harvest meant outfitting a tractor with duals and a "just in case" tow rope. His hope that he would not need it didn't last long.

"The downfall of pea and sweet corn harvest is they (the processor) go rain or shine unless they absolutely cannot move in the fields," Rath said.

On July 4, 2.2 inches of rain fell in less than 10 minutes. "We had pea combines stuck. There was golf-ball-sized hail and 80 mph winds," he recalled. "Then, we had a sliver of good weather so we could enjoy some real fireworks."

Most of his fields are tiled to drain low spots. But the 2.5 inches of rain that fell a few days later proved too much for already saturated soils.

"It's a good year to be a duck here," Rath joked. The pea harvesting crew showed up to harvest his last remaining field in the middle of a rain and eventually pulled out of the field without finishing the job.

"They decided the peas were too far along and they didn't get to them in time," he said, explaining that peas rapidly lose their sugar and turn bitter if left in the field too long. Processors operate under pre-negotiated contracts that pay farmers for bypassed acreage based on a formula of estimated yields. Crop insurance and a producer-funded pool are other tools to help compensate farmers.

"I've never had this happen," he said. "So, I'm getting an education on the repercussions. Hopefully we will at least cover our input costs." The harvesters left 2-foot-deep ruts and the water standing in them will take a bit to dry. But his plan is to level those fields with a high-speed disk and plant the field back to millet, which will eventually be cut, bailed and wrapped as cattle feed.

In the pea fields that were harvested, Rath leveled off the pea residue before preparing the fields to be planted to snap beans. And some of those newly planted snap bean fields got pounded and saturated with enough rain that he's concerned about emergence.

Hail events have left him battered, but not devastated, though. In total, approximately 350 acres of corn, 160 acres of kidney beans and 70 acres of peas have been hit, spread across the landscape between the different events.

"Hail definitely tore us up some, but there wasn't really anything to be done at this stage. So, we left the stands and are monitoring closely. There will be some considerations if we're going to spray fungicides or just let them go," he said.

"Of all the damage, I'm most concerned about kidney beans because they were just beginning to flower and hail often knocks that flower off to prevent pod set."

Rath definitely has his eye on disease pressure this year. Tar spot showed up for the first time last year. Southern rust was also a first timer and arrived with a vengeance, he recalled. The disease doesn't overwinter, but he also doesn't want to be caught off guard this year.

Weeds are also on his mind, particularly in organic scenarios. Wet conditions have limited his ability to do mechanical cultivation this year. This week he did some rescue flaming in an organic corn field that has been too wet to get into most of the season. It caused some snapping of corn as the tractor made a pass, but the weed pressure warranted some kind of action, he said.

Waterhemp and common lambsquarters are the main driver weeds in this area. Edible beans fields, are now requiring two-to-three cultivations per season to battle. This week, Rath was hiring a drone operator to spray green bean fields that have been too wet to handle a ground rig. His name is on the schedule for hand weeding crews in organic fields, too.

When it comes to farm wish lists, Rath would add to the farm's grain storage system by adding a 100,000-bushel bin, a wet bin and a dry and wet leg.

"I don't love having to haul out a whole bunch of corn during harvest time," Rath said. "Usually it's the worst time for prices and there is the time crunch. I like to get corn out of the field and avoid the weather and haul later when it's not so busy."

He almost pulled the trigger on some of those grain storage improvements this year, but he couldn't make the cost pencil at current prices. "Everyone says build the first bin bigger than you want, which I did, but it still wasn't big enough," he said.

Pamela Smith can be reached at pamela.smith@dtn.com

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