Hutchinson ? Some years, farmers harvesting the state’s winter wheat crop have taken a break for Independence Day.

But this year has been different.

“I’d be celebrating,” 90-year-old Reno County farmer Victor Stade said Friday, “but the wheat price is so high and you have to get to it before Mother Nature does.”

The later harvest is attributed to several factors, including a late planting in the fall and a wet and cool early summer that prevented the wheat from maturing as fast as it usually would.

The 80-acre field where Stade was cutting was making better than 50 bushels to the acre this season. Stade was cutting wheat Friday less than a mile from where he was born in 1918.

He recalled early Fourth of July holidays on the family farm.

“We shot firecrackers under tin cans,” he said, chuckling. “Once in a while, a tin can would hit someone in the ear.”

Stade’s son, Roger Stade, was also working Friday, in a field about three miles southeast of his father.

“As a farmer, I prefer to be working,” Roger Stade said, regarding the holiday. “We work 24/7 and hopefully have time off in the winter.”

Meanwhile, at the Mid Kansas Co-op in Haven, local manager Tim Lesslie said the wheat coming in is losing its high grade.

“It’s not No. 1 anymore. The last rain dropped the test weight a couple pounds, enough to get it under 60 pounds,” he said.

The elevator was open Friday and Saturday, but harvest had slowed down enough that it planned to close today.

Lesslie said it wasn’t the first Independence Day he has had to work.

“It’s just part of the job,” he said.