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Wisconsin harvest is moving slow

The cloudy and often wet weather has made Wisconsin’s harvest a slow process.  Montello area farmer Zeb Zuehls tells Brownfield he talked to a couple of custom harvesters last week, and it seems everyone is struggling to get crops in.  “One’s got over a thousand acres of beans to do yet.  The guy I talked to, he’s got over 500 to do.  I’m right around 450-500 acres of beans to do, and you know, I’ve got a lot of corn to do.”

Zuehls says the cool, cloudy and wet weather has not only been a challenge for getting machinery in the field, but it’s also hard to get that crop moisture level to drop.  “I had a couple of loads in at 15, and being I grow food-grade, I’ve got to get them down under that thirteen-and-a-half to get those in, but it’s getting to the point now where either we get them off now or they might be in the snowbank here, I guess.”

Zuehls says they’ve had more than 30 inches of rain in the month of September, and he’s concerned about getting soybeans in before winter.  “We can do corn in the snow, but beans?  That’s a little tougher issue.  That whole plant’s got to go through the combine right off the ground, and any slight snow and that doesn’t quite work.”