GOSHEN -- This year's corn and soybean harvest looks like most of Elkhart County's growing season: A late start, weather complications and slow progress.
"It's touch-and-go. The rain has been an obstacle all fall. We're over half done with soybeans. The corn, we've not even started," said Eleanor Morehouse of Morehouse Farms south of New Paris.
Last weekend's rains kept farmers out of the fields until Monday. Tuesday night's rain slowed things down again, and the next few days look like rain's not going to get out of the way.
The National Weather Service predicted rain for today, but the chances of rain taper off Saturday, according to its forecast. That may open up opportunities for harvest to continue, but most years it's pretty much done by now. Farmers are way behind the normal pace this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's weekly crop report.
"As of Oct. 20, a new record low harvest pace had been set for soybeans with only 34 percent harvested," while the old record for that date was 39 percent in 1990, according to last week's report "Corn harvest is running about 23 days behind the five-year average pace and soybean harvest is about 15 days behind average."
As of Monday, 53 percent of the soybeans had been harvested in this part of the state; last year at that point farmers were at 83 percent, on par with the five-year average. Only 20 percent of corn in this part of the state had been harvested, compared to 56 percent last year and 63 percent for the five-year average.
"Harvest has been slowed because of the cold, wet weather. It just caused a lot of different issues," said Ericka Soumare, ag educator for the Elkhart County Purdue Extension office. "It's just too wet for equipment to be in certain places."
Morehouse said soybeans are top priority since they're more susceptible to damage from snow, whenever it comes. "We wanted to first off get the soybeans off the ground. They will not withstand the bad weather if we get into snow."
Even if all the beans were in, though, the corn wouldn't be far along. Spring weather made for a late start for planting much of the corn in the county. Add to that a cool summer that slowed growing, and much of the corn isn't dry enough -- the kernels themselves -- to harvest.
"The corn is very wet, in the 20s and 30s," when measured in percentage of moisture, Morehouse said.
The target is 15 percent and under, and Morehouse farms match up with much of the rest of the county, Soumare said.
If it's harvested now, the corn will have to be dried, often with natural gas powered heaters.
That adds expense for farmers. "This process of drying our corn is going to be the slow-pokey part of it all," Morehouse said.
The extra moisture this year also led to fungus affecting some of the corn, which makes using the corn a problem for livestock feed, Soumare said.
The other aspect is that with harvest going slow, plantings for winter wheat, which is harvested in late spring, are also behind pace, according to Soumare.
This year is unusual in recent history, but Morehouse said it's not unprecedented. "We remember in the early 70s when there was a time like this," she said.
That led to some fields with corn awaiting harvest all winter long.
"We just keep working at it. I don't know if we'll be done by Thanksgiving or not," Morehouse said.
With all the uncertainty of this growing season, Morehouse said, "It's unpredictable. Farming, we've concluded we might as well stay home instead of going to Las Vegas, because we do plenty of gambling here."