By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

ST. FRANCIS -- Even a garden spot has to dry out sometime.

"It was pretty dry until a week ago," said Charlie Nipps, St. Francis, filling a drill with fertilizer. "We got an inch of rain."

That was enough to send farmers into a tailspin, moving tractors and planters into fields to get the seed into the ground.

It's something of a late start for planting wheat in the St. Francis area, brought on by the drier-than-ideal conditions.

While much of the state either has suffered through drought or been overwhelmed by floodwaters, the far northwest corner of the state has been a garden spot.

"The rain has come at pretty good times," Nipps said. "Here the last month, it shut off."

Never mind that, the field he was ready to plant is in good shape.

"I'm pretty good here, but I'm all no-till," Nipps said of his farming operation. "So I'm sitting much better."

And so much easier, with tractors that pull a drill and even gasoline-powered augers to load fertilizer and wheat into the planters.

"I've seen wheat drilled with horses," said Jim Petracich, who farms near Kanorado but helps Nipps. "And I've done that. I'm old."

Not so old that he struggled to keep the auger steady, other than when the wind threatened to blow his cowboy hat off.

"We're just starting today," Nipps said last week.

"You plant wheat too early, it gets too big," Petracich offered. "It winterkills."

After planting wheat, Nipps will hop on a combine and start the process of cutting corn.

"There was quite a bit of hail around the county," he said. "I think we've got a pretty good crop. The corn that didn't get hailed will run between 225 and 250 bushels per acre."

That's just another reflection of crop conditions there this year.

Irrigated wheat, he said, ranged from 85 to 95 bushels per acre.

His dryland wheat averaged 77 bushels per acre.

"We never raised that good of wheat, dryland, in my life," he said. "It was a fantastic year. We've had two years where it has been great.

"If a guy ended up with 50-bushel yields on dryland, that's still a fabulous crop."