KIOWA ? Barber County farmers on Tuesday were finishing up a disappointing wheat harvest, while overnight rains across other parts of southern Kansas made fields too muddy for combines to go out again.

“We are on the downhill side,” said Alan Meyers, general manager of the OK Co-op Grain Co. in Kiowa.

So far, the seven OK Co-Op elevators in Barber County have taken in 1.3 million bushels of wheat from the area around Kiowa – typically the first place to harvest wheat in Kansas.

Meyers anticipated the area harvest will wind up bringing in 1.5 million or 1.6 million bushels – far short of the 3.5 million bushels the area normally takes in.

Test weights stayed over 61 pounds per bushel, good enough to rate as the best No. 1 milling wheat. But drought has cut yields in half, with the average for harvest in the mid- to upper 20 bushels per acre, he said.