WELLINGTON – Troy Seaworth faces the disheartening prospect of planting fewer crops this year and leaving entire fields fallow, all thanks to a drought now in its second year.

The Larimer County farmer expects to receive about half the amount of water that Seaworth Farms uses after snow in the high country melts away. He will have to rely on crop insurance to cover his costs, and he certainly won’t make a profit.

“It’d be like working for free for a year,” said Seaworth, who will instead rely on income from his family’s farms in Nebraska and last year’s profits to make ends meet. “That’s how we make our living.”

Seaworth’s grandfather bought 80 acres of farmland north of Wellington in 1945. Troy and his father, Richard Seaworth, farm 2,000 acres today, growing sugar beets, corn, hay and wheat. They employ two full-time workers and two part-timers during the summer.

Coming off a pitiful 2012 snowpack, Northern Colorado farmers have worried for months about what this year’s snowpack will portend. Snowpack in the South Platte River Basin hovered at 60 percent of average earlier this month. It has reached only 70 percent in the