"A few guys will be having a turkey sandwich in a combine this week," Dave Pelzer said. "Listening to farmers, I'm guessing we'll be busy most of December and there will be corn left out over the winter."

Pelzer is the elevator manager for Gold'n Plump in St. Cloud. He expects the elevator to be busy drying and storing grain throughout December.

Minnesota's harvest is running late, mostly because of a wet October. The USDA reports the soybean harvest was 97 percent complete as of Sunday. The corn harvest statewide was 66 percent complete. The five-year average has 96 percent of the corn harvested by now.

The St. Cloud area is lagging even further behind.

"Our crop was not as mature when it froze, so our crop was a little wetter than the rest of the state," Dan Martens said. "We're a little behind where the state numbers are at."

Martens is a University of Minnesota extension educator for Stearns, Benton and Morrison counties.

He said that while 90 percent of the local soybean crop is in, area farmers are reporting less than 40 percent of the corn crop has been harvested.

That means farmers will be taking advantage of every dry day to bring the crop in.

Wet fields

The late harvest was caused by a combination of cool summer temperatures and a cold, wet October. Crops matured later than usual, then October rains left fields too muddy to work.

"It's been probably the latest harvest I've seen in my lifetime, and I'm 49," John Traut said. "This is unheard of."

Traut runs a 400-acre dairy farm with his brother, Carl, near Sartell. He said sandy soil allowed them to get heavy equipment into the fields and finish their corn harvest last Sunday. But many of his neighbors are still hard at it.

"A lot of farmers told us they were combining in standing water," Pelzer said.

In addition to muddy fields, many farmers are waiting for crops to dry out. According to Martens, corn moisture levels are about 10 percent higher than they should be at harvest time.

“The weather has been relatively dry in November, but we're working with colder air temperatures so the crop does not dry down in the field a lot," Martens said. "Most of the corn is at 30 percent moisture or more."

Grain that is harvested wet must be dried before storage, adding fuel and labor costs. But the only alternative is to wait, risking a heavy snow that would end the harvest until spring.

"Snow would be a disaster. If we happen to get a deep snow, they can't run the combines," Pelzer said. "The cold makes it miserable, but they can do it."

For Traut, getting the crop in now made the most sense.

"I had to pay some higher drying costs because we harvested it at higher moisture levels, but it wasn't going to come down much anyway," Traut said.

Good yield

The good news for farmers is that yields are strong.

"Many farmers tell me this year is the best crop they've ever grown. The soybeans have had a very good yield and corn is looking very good," Pelzer said.

The late harvest also may be working in farmers' favor. Prices, which generally dip at harvest time, are holding steady.

"Some years we see a large drop in prices during harvest," Martens said. "We really aren't seeing that this year because … the slow harvest has created some questions about how well we'll be able to get this crop off to meet the needs of the marketplace."

The condition of the crop is strong, with the USDA rating 70 percent of the corn crop at good to excellent.

But both Martens and Pelzer noted that wet conditions did create mold issues.

"The only problem we are seeing is a lot of surface mold on the corn. But you run it through the combine, run it through the grain dryer, and most of it disappears in the handling process," Pelzer said

Source:  The St. Cloud Times