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Concerns April Snow Will Set Minnesota Farmers Back

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- As the snow tapers off, cities across the state are digging out.

Western Minnesota saw some of the worst of this snow storm. In Montevideo, residents once again woke up to falling snow.

"I think I need a bigger blower," Ace Hardware's Bill Dickhudt said.

Dickhudt isn't the only one who came to that conclusion Friday morning, as he once again cleared off the sidewalk in front of his store. He just wants to go back to selling grass seed and fertilizer.

"I'm just sick of it. Everything was turning green. Grass was coming up, lawns were bare," Dickhudt said.

Those same lawns are now covered in snow. As are city streets, county roads and farm fields.

"Farmers are optimistic people. They have to be optimistic to do what they're doing. They're going to say it's OK we've got plenty of time to do this, but yeah, it does set them back," Liz Ludwig, County Service Director for the Farm Service Agency, said.

How much still remains to be seen. Ideally they'd be planting around the middle of the month. But there's some deja vu because of what happened last April.

"We had 20.9 inches of snow here in Montevideo," Ludwig said.

The good news is that's about twice as much snow as Chippewa County got this time around. Giving some hope that if spring can quickly make an appearance, some of those worries will melt away.

"They want to get out there and they probably have their planters ready to go," Ludwig said.

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