Snow Puts the Brakes on Fall Harvest in Central Minnesota

UNDATED -- Generally speaking we had about six to seven inches of snow in central Minnesota Tuesday, which has put a stop to the harvest season for the time being.

Nathan Drewitz is the University of Minnesota Regional Agriculture Educator. He says at the start of the week over 60 percent of the acres had been harvested, and he says farmers were going hard over the past few days knowing the snow was coming in.

He says they'll now have to wait for the snow to melt and for the ground to be solid again before they can get the combines and trucks back out in the fields.

Well, I know from last year's experience and heading into this year, if they get an opportunity in December you'll see combines running in December.  There are pictures of guys just finishing up corn harvest in March and April of this year.

The forecast is calling for more snow Thursday and again on Sunday, plus the snow that we do have isn't going away anytime soon with high temperatures forecast to stay in the 30s well into early November.

The USDA is reporting that for the week ending on October 18th corn for grain harvest was 63 percent complete in Minnesota, 23 days ahead of last year and two weeks ahead of the five year average.  Meanwhile, soybeans were 96 percent harvested, 29 days ahead of last year and 20 days ahead of average.

Drewitz says up until this point it had been a relatively smooth harvest season with the corn silage out early, and the combines starting already in late September.

He says the corn moisture levels were coming in between 10 and 20 percent which means the farmers haven't had to dry as much corn this year either.