Weary farmers are finally finishing a harvest that seemed without end.

A combination of bad scenarios has left farmers in southeast Wisconsin ending the year with hundreds of acres of corn still in the fields. A combination of a cool growing season, an early frost, heavy rains through the fall and back-ups at grain dryers have left some farmers still trying to bring in the last of their crops when fields are covered with snow.

“I’m on my 42nd year in here and I’ve never seen it like this,” said Linda Feldkamp, a program technician with the federal Farm Services Agency in Union Grove. Feldkamp said she had seen estimates that as much as 30 percent of the field corn grown in the region had not yet been harvested by mid-December.

By months end, scattered fields of corn remained standing in the snow. Feldkamp said some growers had decided to leave fields unharvested until spring. Farmers throughout the Midwest had similar problems.

Farmers say the conditions that led to the late harvest began in spring when wet, cold weather pushed back planting. That was followed by an unusually cool summer that left the corn crop slow to mature. “The corn just never finished growing,” said Bristol farmer Rob Hawkins. “It just didn’t have enough heat.”

Heavy rains in the fall kept farmers out of the fields. When they were able to start the harvest, they found moisture levels in the corn they harvested far, far higher than normal.

Field corn, one of the primary crops grown by grain farmer in Wisconsin and around the midwest, needs to dry in the field before harvest, ideally harvested with moisture content in the kernels at about 15 percent, said Mark Edquist, president of the Kenosha County Farm Bureau. This year, moisture levels at harvest were about 22 to 33 percent.

That meant that the corn had to go into mechanical dryers before it could be stored. That drying time further pushed back harvest as farmers had to wait for each load to finish drying before they could harvest the next.

Hawkins said the drying time so slowed harvest that he was limited to about 60 acres of corn a day rather than the typical 150 acres per day. He started his harvest Oct. 7 and did not finish until early December. All the time, dryers were operating 24 hours a day. “Over two months it took. It gets kind of grueling,” Hawkins said.

And because the crops needed more time in dryers, fuel costs have soared. “The cost of drying is going to be astronomical,” Edquist said.