Creative combining.

Jodi DeJong-Hughes, an extension educator in Marshall with the University of Minnesota, has started to see it this fall.

Creative combining is where a farmer will combine a field and avoid the wet spots and "come back and pick up what's left later," DeJong-Hughes said.

Some farmers have been forced to take creative approaches to harvest this fall as rain, and then snow from the weekend and Monday, has kept farmers from a typical harvest season.

"Basically the harvest here is, we are about 30 percent done with soybeans," said Kevin Bucholz, the manager of the Hendricks elevator. "No corn yet," Bucholz said. "The snow has definitely slowed it down."

While it's been wet and sloppy, a few farmers were able to harvest some beans and corn Sunday, said DeJong-Hughes and Roger Breyfogle, manager of the Cottonwood Coop Agronomy Center.

"There was a little beans taken out (Sunday) and some corn," Breyfogle said.

"I was surprised people got out (Sunday)," DeJong-Hughes said.

The grain harvested so far has been wet.

Moisture levels for soybeans have ranged from 13.5 percent to 17 percent, Bucholz said. "They're wet," he said.

The wetter the soybeans, the less likely farmers will attempt to get them because the Hendricks elevator won't dry beans and many farmers don't dry beans, Bucholz and DeJong-Hughes said.

"We're not drying beans," Bucholz said. "We're set up for corn."

The elevator did take some beans to dry, "but we are trying not to," Bucholz said.

Buchholz estimated about 30 percent of the soybean crop had been removed from fields, while about 40 percent is out in the Marshall area, DeJong-Hughes said.

What's left in the fields needs to come out but it may be a few days before that happens.

Rain and snow are in the forecast for today and possibly on another day this week. Some forecasts have said temperatures could climb into the 60s during the weekend.

"The soybeans will need to come out," DeJong-Hughes said. "We don't want them to shatter out of their pods."

If the beans stay in the field too long, they break, she said.

If the moisture stops and the temperatures rise, farmers will be back in the fields but the conditions may not yet be ideal.

"It will be a little slick," Bucholz said.

"Farmers will be rutting up the fields," DeJong-Hughes said. As conditions improve, farmers will drive in fields that will still be wet. Combines, tractors pulling wagons and other vehicles traveling through the field will create ruts, she said.

Farmers should try to minimize the ruts by loading grain at the end of the field and reducing the number of vehicles and time those vehicles drive through the field, DeJong-Hughes said.

The conditions have not only changed the timing of harvest but also the timing of the application of fertilizer, Breyfogle said.

"We've gotten a little work done," Breyfogle said. "If the ground is frozen (this) morning we will go out."

Wet fertilizer such as ammonia is spread in mid-October so conditions have slowed that, Breyfogle said.

"We're getting a little nervous," Breyfogle said.

"Farmers are getting a little antsy," Bucholz said.

Yet, "We are still fortunate," Breyfogle said, because farmers in northwest Minnesota have dealt with the conditions this region has recently experienced for the past four or five harvests.