Latest figures indicate June's floods took a $35 million bite out of Sauk County agriculture, UW-Sauk County Extension agent Denise Brusveen says.

Many farmers said they were hoping to gain some cash this year since gas prices have risen, costs for nitrogen have jumped and some fertilizer prices are up to about five times their usual price.

Now farmers are checking with their insurance companies to recover losses and wondering what will happen next, and who will help them.

The bills must be paid first -- a headache for one Baraboo native due to large crop losses. Gene Larsen said he's trying to figure out how to recover $1.1 million in crop losses.

Larsen took out crop insurance, and because 50 percent of the crops he manages were damaged, he's expecting to get some money back.

He is also hopeful he can receive $100,000 in federal disaster funding as part of a national farm bill enacted this summer by Congress and doled out by the Farm Service Agency. However, he will have to wait until Oct. 1 to see what he'll get, he said, until harvests are recorded.

From Larsen's fields in Fairfield across Highway U, near Highway 33 in Sauk County -- where water rose to the side of the road by the Baraboo River during flooding -- tree trunks, silt and barren fields lie where healthy crops used to be.

The owner of one of those once-healthy fields, Roy Luther of Luther Farms, did not have crop insurance.

"We lost everything here, about 60 acres' worth here. We're on our own," he said.

Overall, he said he owns about 4,000 acres of crops and lost about 1,500 acres, including the crops he said were replanted after the first round of flooding in summer.