Eastern Iowa Farmer Spring 2021

mother nature
so much they could do.
“There’s some fields they couldn’t get
all the corn that was on the ground,” Frett
said.
Clinton County farmer Chad Petersen
estimated that about 20% of his 400 acres
of corn was flattened by the derecho.
“We’re going to do as much as we can
to get the crop in the bin,” he said during
a break from a challenging harvesting last
fall. He invested in a crop sweeper after
he scouted his fields post derecho and
saw that his corn was only flat in places,
and the insurance adjuster told him to do
the best he could.
“There are times in the past I thought it
might have been nice to have a sweeper,
but it wasn’t necessarily an every year
thing,” said Petersen, 46, who farms
about 750 acres in the Goose Lake area.
Had he not had it for last fall’s harvest,
he would have had to pick corn going in
just one direction because of the damage,
wasting time and fuel not to mention
leaving grain on the ground.
David
Frett
DeWitt, Donahue
David Frett, location manager
of River Valley in DeWitt
and Donahue, said the
storm knocked the life out of
corn that on Aug. 9 looked
promising. While the producers
who were heavily impacted
tried to salvage as much as
possible, it was a challenge
when the plants were lying flat.
Eastern Iowa Farmer photo /
Trevis Mayfield
When tragedy strikes, rely on a local Iowa insurance company.
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Visit www.heritagemutual.net to find an agent near you.
eifarmer.com spring 2021 | Eastern Iowa Farmer 55