Wichita — The winter wheat harvest is picking up across most of Kansas, but industry experts said Thursday that early yields are disappointing and sporadic rains are frustrating efforts.

Harvest began last week in southern Kansas, where farmers got a few hours of cutting in before intermittent storms rolled in. The rain forced them to wait for their fields to dry before trying to cut again before the next rainfall, and several elevator managers said some growers have gotten their machines mired in muddy fields.

“The plant is dead, the wheat ready to harvest,” Rick Kimbrel, manager of Valley Co-op in Winfield, said Thursday. “It is just a matter the fields are so saturated at this time. It is difficult to get through a field, especially in low spots, without getting stuck.”

A farmer in Sumner County spent three hours trying to pull his combine out, he said.

“We don’t want rains to stop, necessarily. But it wouldn’t be bad if they stopped for 10 days and then came back,” Kimbrel said.

Farmers are also struggling with the shorter height of drought-stricken wheat, which makes it more difficult for combines to keep their headers out of the mud.

The rains came too late to help most of Kansas’ wheat crop, which has been hard-hit by the drought since it was planted last fall. Most fields in Sumner County are averaging yields in the 30-plus bushel an acre range, compared to between 40 and 45 bushels per acre in a normal year, Kimbrel said. But those lower yields were still far better than what many growers elsewhere in the state were bringing in.

In Medicine Lodge, in south-central Kansas, Farmers Co-op secretary Lori Johnson said most fields were averaging 10 to 13 bushels an acre.

“It has been very sad,” she said. “We have seen everything from 7 to 17 (bushels per acre). The quality is pretty good, but the quantity is pretty bad.”

She noted that muddy fields in her area also were delaying harvest. But, she added: “We need the moisture so bad, nobody is complaining too much.”

Farmers are cutting across southern Kansas and a central swatch of the state, bringing in lower-than-normal yields but with higher protein content, according to Kansas Wheat, an industry group.

Growers in northeast and northwest Kansas haven’t started harvesting, but farmers elsewhere are trying to get into the fields if they’re dry enough, said Kansas Wheat spokeswoman Marsha Boswell.

They are getting reports of harvest activity now extending as far north as Cloud and Mitchell counties in north-central Kansas.

At the AgMark elevator in Clay Center, grain buyer David Pfizenmaier said Thursday that the facility had just taken in the first seven loads. It was too early to get a sense of yields, he said, but test weights have been running 60.1 pounds per bushel, slightly above the benchmark for top-quality wheat.

“Very high humidity has made it hard for people to get started,” he said. “And there is still milo and soybean planting in our area which is keeping people busy.”