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By Deb Gau

dgau@marshallindependent.com

It's been a wetter and longer harvest season than normal, but it's coming to a close in the Marshall area.

Clear, dry weather in November gave farmers a chance to get into the fields, so the majority of crops have been harvested, area elevators said this week.

"We had a great November, that let the crops condition in the field," said Bill Doyscher, assistant general manager at Farmers Cooperative Elevator in Hanley Falls. "If we had had two Octobers in a row, it would really have been difficult."

However, in places that got more moisture, especially to the north and west, the work is still going on.

"We've been very fortunate in our area, but you don't have to go far to the west or south, or maybe even the east" to see a difference, said Bob Anderson, the CHS Tracy location manager. Around Tracy, he said, "There's very little left. The beans are done, and there's just a few acres of corn."

"Around Marshall, they've done really well," with almost all of the harvest complete, said University of Minnesota Extension educator Jodi DeJong-Hughes.

Head farther north toward the Benson area, she said, and the portion of the harvest that's been completed drops to about 60 percent.

Doyscher said in the Hanley Falls area, the harvest is about 90 percent complete.

"But in the far west and far northern edge of our range, they still have about 10 days to go," he said.

Kevin Bucholz, manager at the Hendricks elevator, said harvests weren't quite as far along.

"It's about 85 percent (complete) now," he estimated. "It's just corn left."

There are risks facing farmers in areas that are still harvesting, Doyscher and DeJong-Hughes said. The longer crops stay in the fields, the greater the risk of damage from ice, which pulls cornstalks down and makes them harder to combine.

But the bigger concern is that a freeze or moisture from snow could prevent fall tillage, DeJong-Hughes said.

For all the trouble it took to harvest them, area crop yields were good this year, elevator staff said.

"We've had good yields, better than had been expected," Doyscher said. "That lightens the mood."

In the Hendricks area, Bucholz estimated crop yields of around 21 percent, which was a good amount.

"They're very good," Anderson said of crop yields around Tracy. "We've probably dumped more grain this fall than we've ever done before."

Dragging harvest out an extra month or so can be hard on the people working, Anderson said, but it also allowed area elevators to make extra room for the harvested beans and corn.

"If all those bushels had hit us in the normal month or six weeks," he said, it would have been hard to handle.

So far, DeJong-Hughes said, the amount of snow the region has received isn't enough to stop harvests or ruin crops.

"They're combining right now," Bucholz said early Thursday afternoon. If the weather gets warmer and the snow melts, it might mean another pause in the harvest.

Wet combining conditions have been a struggle all fall, Doyscher said, but it hasn't made harvest impossible.

"You just deal with it," he said.