“We actually finished up a couple of weeks ago, but there’s some corn still standing and I’m sure some people wish that there wasn’t,” said Brian Harbage, a South Charleston farmer.
Champaign County is in better shape, too, according to Tom Tullis, an Urbana farmer for more than a half century and a long-time Champaign County fair board member.
“Most everything in Champaign is done. I’d say we are 99 percent done,” said Tullis. “There’s still just a little bit out here. The snow’s going to melt off in a couple, two or three days, and they’ll be back out it.”
Tullis knows, however, that his Champaign County peers are lucky they got the harvest in sooner.
“The corn still in the field is mostly out in our northern counties like Logan, Auglaize and Allen counties,” he said.
As of Sunday, 83 percent of Ohio’s corn had been harvested.
“The farmer is at the whim of mother nature, and with the spring we had and then with the fall being wet, the farmers just could not get into the fields to get what they needed to get done,” said Mandy Havener, organization director for the Miami County Farm Bureau. Miami County is also experiencing harvest problems due to the snow.
Snow can cause big problems, Harbage said.
“If there’s snow on the leaves or the ears of the stalk, that plugs up the screens of the combine,” he said. “Then you have to stop everything and unplug it.”
Because of the conditions now, some Southwest Ohio farmers could be working into December this year to complete their harvests.
The delays could be a result of a year’s worth of imperfect conditions.
“We had some untimely rains this year that delayed the corn harvest some,” Harbage said.
The percentage of soybeans harvested as of Sunday is also slightly down. Last year at this time, farmers had harvested 99 percent of their soybeans; this year, they have gathered 93 percent.
There is still work to be done aside from harvesting, as well. Farmers need time to till their land and spray for weeds before winter arrives in full force, Harbage said.
“Not very much of that has probably been done yet,” he said. “You would want it to be done, but it’s probably not a necessity. Sometimes you just have to forego some things due to the weather conditions.”
The weather in the next couple of weeks will be crucial, Tullis said.
“They are talking that it is going to warm up, so as long as there is not as much rain and the ground gets too wet, we ought to be OK,” he said. “But once the ground freezes up, we won’t be able to (till the fields) as the ground will be too hard. It just tears everything up.”
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