Recent rain has kept many farmers from the fields in recent days, but dry weather could get the farmers back in the fields soon.

“The moisture actually wasn’t a bad thing. The thing is it was dragged on for a whole week, so it’s kind of a long delay. The important thing is to get a lot of good sunshine right now and a lot of good drying weather. We’ll be back at it before you know it with days like today,” said David Paulson, speaking on sunny Tuesday. He farms corn and soybeans near Hayward.

Unfortunately, it rained again this morning, but less than a tenth of an inch, according to the weather observing station at the Albert Lea Municipal Airport.

Loren Lair, who farms corn and soybeans east of Hayward, said it will take at least two dry, sunny days to dry out the soybeans.

“We needed some rain, but it just pushed it back. We’re going to have a late fall,” Lair said.

Lair said having a setback because of rain is common. He said it wouldn’t affect the soybeans anymore because it’s mature. However, farmers can’t harvest soybeans until they’re dry.

David Ausen, who farms corn, sweet corn and soybeans northwest of Manchester, also said the weather has delayed his harvest.

“It’s just delayed our harvest. It’s been raining the last few days. We’ll be ready to go when it gets dry again,” Ausen said. 

When the farmers can continue harvesting will depend on a number of things like temperature, sunny days and wind, Ausen said.

Farmers had recently said they hoped the frost would hold off until around Oct. 6. Now the frost isn’t having as large an effect on the crops.

Lair said he would like to see temperatures get down to about 25 degrees to dry out the corn.

“It might as well freeze. It’s time to freeze the corn and get the harvest going. It’s kind of normal this time of year. We need the corn to start drying down. It doesn’t need to be green this time of the year,” Lair said

Ausen said the frost could affect farmers with late planted corn, but he doesn’t think his crops would be affected.

“For my own crops, it’s late enough in the season it won’t damage them at all,” Ausen said. “It will actually probably dry them down better, take some of the moisture out of the stems.”

Lair said the rain hasn’t made the fields too muddy to farm; in fact, he said the rain has been good for the ground.

Drying crops after harvest is an expense farmers like to avoid.

While September was a good month for drying the corn, Ausen said farmers likely will need to dry the corn before it can be stored.

On the National Weather Service forecast there’s a 30 percent chance of rain Thursday with high temperatures in the mid- to lower 40s by the weekend with lows around 25.

Friday looks to be sunny. There is a chance of snow Friday night and on Saturday, which has everyone talking, but the snow would probably the wet kind, not the dry kind.

“We’re all patiently waiting,” Ausen said. Without more rain, Ausen said farmers could be back in the field by the weekend.

Paulson said his corn has about 30 percent moisture in the grain. He doesn’t want to harvest until it’s at 25 percent or lower. Typically corn has to be at 14 percent to be stored. Paulson said it would save the expenses of drying to have a week of dry weather because the corn could drop by 5-6 percent.

“We just need a lot of good weather in this area because we are lagging a couple weeks behind on this harvest. As you get later into October and the days get shorter, it gets harder to get good drying weather. But we’re always optimistic that things will always work out,” Paulson said.