Hi-Line Living - Montana farmers sowing seeds

April is seeding season, a time during which Hill County farmers continuously work for weeks to plant more than 1 million acres of green peas, lentils, alfalfa, canola, barley and Montana's largest export, wheat - among others.

Les Rispens, executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Hill County Farm Service Agency, said the county has about 1.7 million farm acres, with 1,145,519 of those acres used for crops.

Last season's moisture has set this season up to be a demanding one, he added.

"This is going to be a busy planting season for our farmers because last fall was wet, so their winter wheat plantings were dramatically reduced. That means they have more acres to seed this spring," he said.

Bruce Boyum is one of those farmers. He spoke optimistically about the coming season.

"Well, it's going to be a good season. It's going to be a good start once we get going. A lot of good moisture to start with. We had some good rain last fall," he said.

Matthew Boyum, Bruce's son, works with his father in the family business. Last Friday, Matthew was working in the shop and waiting for his dad to return with some needed parts.

When Matthew is not helping seed or spraying herbicides, he is busy setting up and repairing the ag equipment. He walked out of the shop and into a field riddled with old cars and trucks, planters and drills, and two tractors, the newer one in the center of the field. Matthew pointed out a series of black hydraulic hoses that stretch from the front of the tractor to the seeders and fertilizer cart. That was one one of his latest projects, he said, installing them.

Like his son, Bruce has been in the family business all his life.

"Got it from my dad, my dad got it from his dad - so we're third generation, maybe fourth," he said.

Farming, Bruce said, is all he knows. But that doesn't mean he feels trapped and discontent with his trade. He turned his head toward a big, blue sky.

"You look at this office," he said. "The great outdoors. You can't beat it."

Bruce says he doesn't have the endurance to work like he did in his younger years.

"I can't put the hours in like I used to," he said. "But Matt can."

He said he usually seeds during the day and Matthew will take a shift at night, in addition to doing all the spraying.

Bruce said he considers himself as retired as he'll ever be.

As of last Friday, the Boyums were not sure if they would be able to start seeding this week.

"It's still muddy out there - a week or two - we'll be hitting it," Matthew said.

In addition to wheat, canola, peas and lentils, the Boyums are trying a crop considered unconventional for Montana.

"We're going to try a little corn, that's going to be new this year. We're gonna put in a field of corn. We're not supposed to, but we're going to give it a go," Bruce said. "It might take a little more moisture than we normally get, but yeah, we're going to give it a try, see what it's like."

The low price of wheat in recent years has prompted Bruce to try crops like lentils, a bushy lens-shaped plant in the legume family.

Lentils, Rispens said, have become very popular with Montanan farmers. Two years ago, 4,797 acres in Hill County were planted with lentils. That number rose to 19,487 acres in 2016, and this year, Rispens said, the number of lentil-planted acres could double last year's.

One major reason for the large increase of Montanan lentils starts in Saskatchewan, Canada. Rispens said the fungus ascochyta blight has affected the Saskatchewan soil and greatly reduced lentil production in past years. The fungus then spread down to North Dakota, reducing lentil production there as well. So to keep up with lentil demand, Montanan farmers are capitalizing on the spread of ascochyta blight before it hits their soil as well.

Not everyone is digging into the lentil trend.

Wade Bitz started planting green peas south of Gildford with his Case tractor on Wednesday. His goal was to plant 60 acres that day. His crop portfolio for the season would also include spring wheat and barley.

Like Bruce, Wade comes from a family of farmers. He's a fourth generation farmer. He said he took a break while attending college but has been back to farming since 2005.

Wade's tractor is a long way from what he said his father remembers plowing with. His dad, Wade said, told him about days he remembers plowing, out in the sun, with mud flinging onto him from the trailing plow. All day, he said, his dad would be pelted with mud.

Nowadays, Wade's enclosed and air-conditioned tractor is a cozy and mud-free working office. The tractor has a GPS navigation system that keeps track of what part of the field has been already plowed. It also allows him to keep his hands off the steering wheel until he needs to make a wide turn.

To his right, a touch screen monitor helps Wade regulate the amount of fertilizer, among other things. Above the monitor, Wade hung his cellphone. He was watching the news.

After finishing his most recent round, Wade stepped down and met with his father, who'd been watching from the dirt path in between fields. Their two white pickup trucks were parked opposite each other.

The men stood together, looking on a partially-seeded field. A gopher, one of many in the large swath of ground, popped its head out of a mound, about 20 feet away. Wade walked over to his father's pickup and returned with a lever-action .22-caliber rifle. He brought the scope up to his eye and shot it.