Big Horn Basin farmers couldn’t wait to get 2014 behind them.

It was a difficult year from the start, with a wet spring that kept them out of their fields, delaying planting. A cooler-than-normal summer prevented crops from reaching their full potential, and a hard early frost on Sept. 12-13 just added to the misery. Continued high and low swings in the winter damaged the beet crop.

“It’s a winter of discontent, and there’s a lot of reason for it,” said Kelly Spiering, who farms 600 acres in the Heart Mountain area. Spiering is the new chairman of the Powell Economic Partnership, Inc., board, and he shared the bad news during PEP’s annual meeting on Jan. 20. On Friday, he explained what went wrong and the impact it will have.

“It’s just been all around a bad year,” said Spiering, who has been farming for 39 years. He grows grass and alfalfa seed and talks with neighbors and friends who raise beans, sugar beets, barley and other crops. None have fond memories of 2014.

“It was pretty negative,” Spiering said Friday. “We had the wet spring, and it was too cold all summer. Then the early frost wiped out the beans, hurt alfalfa seed and ruined sunflowers.

“And there are beets rotting in piles,” he said. “It was too warm when they were dug and then below zero and then it warmed up.”

On Thursday, Spieiring was in Burlington talking about the rough year. A man who works for a bean company told him that every year, there is a hailstorm or two or some frost damage in the area. But 2014 played no favorites.

“This year, it just froze everything everywhere,” Spiering said. “The sunflowers were killed early and there was not enough warmth all summer to finish. The company is paying to haul light loads. That doesn’t bode well. From what I’ve heard, they’re going to drop prices next year.”

He said dry bean farmers face a rough choice. Insurance companies sent mixed signals, leaving farmers unsure if they should harvest the crop or leave them in the fields.

“The bean guys don’t know what to do, the market is pretty poor,” Spiering said.

And once the word got out on the poor crop in northwest Wyoming, bean sales slumped. As much as 40 percent of the beans harvested were damaged, and because combines pick up both the good and bad beans, buyers were reluctant to purchase the local harvest.

He said the word is that Western Sugar lost money because of the damaged crop and the low cost of sugar, in large part because the Mexican government is subsidizing sugar from that country that is brought in the United States.

Farm Bureau Insurance agent Larry French said most farmers will face a trying year.

“Well, it’s going to mean these guys are probably packing more debt into the next year,” French said, while noting the impact of 2014 varies from farm to farm.

He said producers will have to spend their money on fuel, fertilizer and seed. Other items will have to be passed on for the year.

“Those ag dollars won’t turn over,” French said.

Powell Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jaime Schmeieser said she has not heard dire warnings of a decline in spending from farm families.

“That might be true. I haven’t heard anything through the grapevine,” Schmeieser said. “People aren’t talking to me about it.”

Some farmers give up

Camby Reynolds, the farm manager of the University of Wyoming Powell Research and Extension Center, grew up in the area, so he’s seen the ups and downs of farming. Reynolds said 2014 was a disastrous year.

“I don’t know what kind of impact it will have on them, but I know several farmers decided to go find a job this year,” he said.

French and Reynolds both said they have heard of “several” farmers who will not plant a crop this year. They gave it up, both men said, and will instead look for jobs.

French said he also has heard of some farmers retiring, but it’s unclear if any of these decisions were linked to the rough year.

French has spent 60 years watching the weather and crops in the region. He farmed from 1972-82, so he’s well aware of the highs and lows of farming.

French said 2014 will go down in local memory alongside other bad years, such as 1994, which was a bad year for beans; 1998, when an early freeze damaged beans and corn; and 2009, when seemingly every crop was hurt by a hard freeze. Of course, it seemed like the entire 1980s were difficult years, with land prices skyrocketing and then slumping, and commodity prices dropping dramatically.

Lyle Bjornestad has been farming for 18 years. He works 3,000 acres, where beets, beans, malt barley and alfalfa grow and cows graze. Bjornestad is also on the Western Sugar Cooperative Board of Directors. Prior to that, he was the farm manager at the research center.

“2013 bled into 2014,” Bjornestad said, noting that the previous year wasn’t the best for all local producers, either.

The wild weather swings damaged a lot of crops, but it was post-harvest weather changes that is doing the most harm to beets. A very cold November froze the crop in piles, Bjornestad said. Then, December was much warmer, a swing of 40 to 50 degrees from the 20-below lows of November.

That “freeze and thaw cycle” harms beets, he said, and causes them to deteriorate after a solid year, with  sugar content in the beets at 17 percent, according to Mark Bjornestad, Western Sugar’s senior agriculturalist. The harvest, which averaged 28 tons per acre, was right on the five-year average, he said.

While beets are still being hauled to the factory in Lovell to be sliced, a lot of them are rotting in piles, Lyle Bjornestad said.

Western Sugar will take a “substantial loss” for the 2014 harvest, he said, totaling in the millions. Cooperative members got an initial payment after the harvest and another in January. They are scheduled to receive more money in March and October as the sugar is sold, he said. Bjornestad said that final payment may not happen.

Bjornestad said 2015 will be a challenge.

“Some guys are going to have a tougher go, no doubt,” he said.

However, farmers are finding other sources of revenue, Bjornestad said. Some open their fields to herds of lambs that are trucked in. The sheep feed on beet tops left in the fields, he said.

It’s a way to pick up some extra cash, and that’s something almost all local producers will look for in 2015.