Area harvest moving slowly to completion

Though many Fayette County farmers are making progress in getting their crops out of the fields, this year’s harvest is all over the map.
“We have a few who have finished harvesting, and we have others who won’t finish until Thanksgiving,” said Ron Marshel, Fayette County Farm Bureau manager. “A few fields of soybeans remain, but there’s still a considerable amount of corn to be harvested.”
Marshel estimated that 85-90 percent of the county's soybeans have been cut, and about 75 percent of the corn has been harvested.
“Even though the cool, wet weather we’ve been having  recently doesn’t lend itself to drying the crops, the moisture levels are coming down slowly,” he said.
So far, he said, yields have ranged from 25 bushels per acre to the mid 60s for soybeans, and from 150 to 240 bushels per acre for corn. The corn, in particular, is dramatically better than last year, when some drought-ravaged fields produced only 15 bushels per acre.
“Everybody is wanting to get finished,” Marshel said. “We’re in November now, and that means we can expect significantly cooler weather.”
He noted that the area’s first killing frost occurred in the last week of October – about 10 days later than the average.
“That extra 10 days really helped the late beans to  mature,” he said. “Some of the late-planted ones really needed the extra time.”
Though the recent rains have slowed the harvest of soybeans and corn, they have been helpful to the germination of the area’s winter wheat crop, Marshel said. And more moisture is needed to get that crop off to a good start.