This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Heidi Reed, an agronomy educator with Penn State Extension.

Reed was recently part of a crop conditions tour across the state, and this year's corn and soybean yields are looking average to below average, mainly due the dry conditions.

"Unless somebody has an irrigated field, I don't think any yield records are going to be broken this year," Reed said.

The dry summer came on the heels of a very wet spring, making it a tough weather year for Pennsylvania farmers.

Prolonged stretches of weather are becoming more common in the state.

"When I talk to farmers who have been doing this for a long time, they're seeing less predictable seasons and more extreme weather events," Reed said. "When there's a drought, it's a very bad drought. And then when we get rain, it's 6 inches all at once."

One thing Reed suggests to help mitigate the weather extremes is soil conservation.

"Focusing on soil health is not necessarily something that you're going to see reflected in the checkbook," she said. "But every time we increase the percent of soil organic matter, our soil is able to hold onto more of that water when we do get it and store that water so it's available to the crop when we have a drought and stay intact instead of washing away when we get extreme, pounding rainfall."

Reed has recently been doing some work on seeding cover crops using drones. She said drone use has become more commonplace and affordable in agriculture over the past few years.

"It's a tool in the toolbox, right?" she said. "There's a time and a place where it can really effectively be used and other times where it just doesn't make sense."

Reed is incorporating some of her Extension research into Lancaster Farming's Now Is the Time column that she recently took over after longtime columnist Leon Ressler retired.

"I am enjoying carrying on the tradition," Reed said.

While she plans on keeping the structure of the column the same, she does hope to add some of her own narrative and personality each week.