The harvest window farmers were waiting for finally opened up in mid-October, allowing significant progress in corn and soybean harvest after wet weather sidelined combines since late September.

“People really hit beans hard for the last two weeks,” Chet Vander Velde, an O’Brien County Farm Bureau member, said Oct. 25. “I would say beans are probably 90 percent out around here and corn is probably at 35 percent.”

Farmers put in long days and late nights, and many dealt with stuck grain carts and combines as soils remained soft underneath the surface, he said. A number of farmers have put tracks on their equipment to lessen the chances of getting stuck, Vander Velde noted.

“I’ve seen a lot of tracks this year that I’ve never seen before,” he said.

September was an extremely wet month for Iowa with rainfall accumulations 8 to 10 inches above average at many locations, according to Justin Glisan, state climatologist with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. The wet weather continued ...