Grant County flooding leaves days of cleanup for farmers

GRANT COUNTY, Wis. — Grant County farmers and emergency management staff say they’ve seen more than 16 inches of rain over the past week. Six inches of rain came down overnight, leaving farmers in the area with days of cleanup to follow.

“This is about the third or fourth hundred-year flood in the last five years,” said farmer Paual McLean.

McLean said his farm near Lancaster sits on low ground and every time it rains, he has to make sure his cattle are on high enough ground to stay safe. He said that he salvages whatever crops are left.

His friend, Joe Jewison, who is also a farmer in the area, said the rains create an even bigger problem because “when you get these heavy rains, it will tear the fences out. You can see these logs and stuff floating down the river. So a lot of the livestock people, as soon as you have a rain like this, the first thing you’re out doing is fixing fence and trying to repair everything.”

Jewison said there’s no way to prepare for floods like this, but because flooding happens so often in the area, he’s come to accept that he and others will spend a lot of time cleaning up after it stops raining.

“After this, there’s a lot of cleanup. Even in the fields and stuff, there’s debris running down,” Jewison said. “Logs and trees and stuff. It gets to be a lot of cleanup, let alone getting the crop out, the crop we’ve got left.”

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