Crop Comments: Punxsutawney Phil Booed by Winter-Tired Audience

Punxsutawney Phil typically emerges to look for his shadow around 7:25 a.m. on Feb. 2 at Gobbler’s Knob in Pennsylvania. If he sees his shadow, legend dictates six more weeks of winter; if he doesn’t, an early spring is predicted.

My first woodchuck hunting experiences took place at our home farm in Greene County during the early 1960s, during my late teens. We were worried that one of our beefers would step in a woodchuck den’s entrance and break a leg. In addition to the very real threat of a bovine broken leg, the den’s creation actually resulted in lots of soil being flung, covering adjacent earth, destroying forage.

My first serious encounter with the handiwork of one woodchuck family (not just individuals unlucky enough to end up in my rifle’s crosshairs) occurred during summer 1964. I was working for Mr. Wilson, who owned a dairy farm on New York’s Schoharie Creek. The purpose for such employment was two-fold: first, to earn money, and second, to amass farm practice credits for Cornell, where I would begin classes as an ag college freshman that September.

One hot June day, my boss was baling hay. As a very frugal person, he had not purchased a bale kicker. Thus, my primary job was to pull the bales out of the square baler chute, stacking them carefully on the hay wagon. My secondary job was to watch for woodchuck holes in front of the baler pick-up. I never quite figured out why that was my responsibility, since I was behind the baler, and the wide-raked hay windrow could totally hide large openings to woodchuck dens.

Neither Wilson nor I saw such a den’s front door. The baler’s idler wheel dropped into that hole, allowing the pick-up to slam into the mound next to that opening. Hay baling was done for the day as he removed the wounded hale pick-up and threw it in his light pick-up. He had me ride with him to the nearest New Holland dealer.

The dealer’s service people repaired the baler’s pick-up while we waited. And my boss made sure that I was aware that the repair job cost over $25! I worried that he would take that unplanned expense out of my wages ($20/week, plus room and board). Fortunately, he paid for all the woodchuck’s damage.

The following day, a sunny one, the baler was back at work, as was I, with a hay hook. All told, Wilson was a very fair boss.

At the end of the haying season he paid me 11 weeks’ wages. This was my first job where Social Security was collected. Employer and employee were each responsible for 1.85% at that time, but Wilson paid my share as well as his.

Fast forward to Groundhog Day 2026, in Punxsutawney, PA. Weather Channel viewers saw one of Phil’s Inner Circle spokespersons (wearing a formal top hat) reach into the critter’s den and grab a scroll, allegedly written by the rodent. The human read the document as follows: “We look to the future, and not just the past, so I suppose this party could use a forecast. It is my job this February 2, to look to the skies and report back to you, that there is a shadow here on my ground. Thus six more weeks of winter abound.”

From the crowd of several thousand shivering spectators, the boos far outweighed the cheers.

Just how accurate Phil’s prophecy in terms of practical matters – like when legumes can be frost-seeded – is debatable. Likely a more meaningful date, agriculturally, is the day before Groundhog Day. Old-timers believed that as of Feb. 1, livestock farmers should have half of their starting winter’s hay inventory left. Most such sages began grazing programs in early May. At most Northeast locations, if cattle start grazing earlier than that, with no supplemental human-harvested forage, there was a good chance that paddocks would be over-grazed, unless pastures were super-abundant. This meant that the recovery period for the sites in question would be longer than desired.

Most grazing experts stress that paddocks shouldn’t be any shorter than four inches. When standing forages are about to become shorter than that, there’d better be other paddocks with a lot more chow to move livestock to. If we respect this height absolute minimum, the recovery period shouldn’t run more than three to four weeks, assuming soil fertility and moisture are not limiting. Interestingly, that four inch minimum – according to many deep-thinking agronomists – applies to the stand health of perennial crops, regrowing winter annuals and millets, sorghums and sudangrasses.

In worst case scenarios – ones in which forage inventories are less than half of what the farmer started with on Halloween – one or both of two things usually takes place. First, pastures start getting grazed prematurely and/or aggressively.

Second, in order for pastures not to be ravaged by grazing ruminants, their owner ends up buying hay at a time well past the point when good supplies of “milky” hay are available.

Experienced grazing experts can show that supplementing purchased hay to browsing cattle, rather than burning out overly-taxed swards, will spawn a fourfold return on investment in terms of quantity of harvestable forage later in the grazing season.

Even if the coldest day of the ongoing winter is past, we can still put to good use whatever lingering cold weather remains.

Many dairy persons own, or have access to, some dry, fair quality, so-called “heifer/dry-cow hay.” This hay may actually be good for milking cows when such animals are voraciously chowing down forages in extra cold weather. This is because cattle (and sheep and goats) are basically ruminating furnaces.

If they acquire warmth from this fiber (something nutritionists call heat increment), this means they will be tapping into less energy, otherwise destined to support milk production. But with these lower quality forages, let’s remember to test them for protein and mineral status.

by Paris Reidhead