Golden heads of wheat sway in the wind in a field north of Lawrence. As the harvest gets under way in the area, the effects of recent rains are reflected in low yields and test weights.

With wheat harvest finally creeping into northeast Kansas, the folks who harvest, sell and buy the breadbasket grain are finding themselves looking back with a sense of frustration.

Too bad the combines couldn’t have gone to work a month earlier.

“I had several guys tell me they were looking at the best wheat crop they’d ever seen on their fields,” said Matthew Vajnar, grain merchandiser for Ottawa Cooperative Association, which has elevators in Lawrence and the area. “That was in the middle of May. Since then we’ve had all the rain.”

Hopes for the area’s wheat crop are dwindling into what might have been, as rains throughout the first half of June have knocked down test weights, shriveled up kernels and left plants suffering from a fungal disease.

A farmer near Worden, in southwest Douglas County, hauled three loads Monday from his fields to Baldwin City, where the grain weighed in at 58 pounds per bushel – below the 60-pound benchmark, but still OK considering the soaking that area fields have been enduring the past month, said Verlyn Gilges, at Baldwin Feed Co. Inc.

It’s still too early to tell how hard-hit this year’s wheat will be, Gilges said, especially with rain still in the forecast and anxious farmers ruminating about when to start up their combines.

But Gilges is trying to stay positive. While he’s certain to take in damaged wheat this season, he’s fairly confident he’ll avoid having a crop as bad as last year’s. The 2007 wheat had been hammered by a late-April frost that left farmers with production that rivaled the worst showing since 1993.

Too cold too late one year. Too much water the next.

“It just seems like there’s always something,” Gilges said.

Vajnar worries that his elevators will be taking in wheat coming off fields with relatively low yields: an average of 20 to 25 bushels an acre, maybe worse.

“This is the second year in a row that we’ve had subpar wheat crop,” he said.

Up to 20 percent of the area’s wheat this year may be ineligible for milling into flour, he said, because of damage from a fungal disease known as head scab.

The co-op’s Burlingame elevator started taking in wheat this past weekend, when about two dozen loads came in, and the early wheat had test weights ranging from 55 to 58 pounds per bushel.

Vajnar already is aware of particular tales of woe.

“I’ve heard some horror stories about appraisals – as low as 2 to 3 bushels per acre,” he said.