A good farming year is easy to recognize, says John Thulen of Pioneer Potatoes.

“My ancestors bought a pickup, built a barn or added on to the house,” he said. It’s all in the county register.

With record rainfall, late freezes, a cool spring and rising prices for diesel and fertilizer, 2022 looks like a no-pickup, no-addition year.

Many fields have been too wet to plant, like four of Jason Vander Kooy’s under the east side of Pleasant Ridge on Bradshaw Road.

Water from the Ridge “comes off faster now that the east side of Ridge is getting more and more developed,” explained Van...