PALMYRA, Mo. — After the traditional start to harvest on corn, Northeast Missouri farmer Will Bier made the switch to soybeans as soon as he had beans ready for harvest, saying with a laugh he could harvest corn in the snow better than beans.

He started harvest around Sept. 15 with corn.

MENDON, Mo. — Some gray clouds scurried across the sky above, but harvest in North Central Missouri continued as Mike Mauzey harvested a field of soybeans in Chariton County. It was Oct. 5, and he had just started cutting soybeans, although finding a field that was ready to cut was a bit of a challenge.

“I just started,” Mauzey says of his soybean harvest. “This is my first day. These beans are way too tough.”

HARDIN, Mo. — It has been an unusual year in Northwest Missouri, and as a result Ray County farmer Kirk Ellis was working through harvest while still hoping his late-planted soybeans continued to develop and increase yield.

Warm weather in late September and early October had helped the late crop and given a clear window for harvest progress.

RHINELAND, Mo. — For Gary Engemann, farming on the Missouri River bottom has a familiarity to it, as he has seen the good times and the challenges.

“I’ve been down here my whole life,” he says.

BERGER, Mo. — It was an up-and-down weather year in East Central Missouri, but Danny Kuenzel says the end result on his farm was a very good corn crop. Speaking on Oct. 8, Kuenzel, who farms in Washington and Franklin counties, says corn harvest started in places in early September and is mostly finished up now. Soybean harvest is in the early stages as some rains hit in October.

“We finished up corn just this last week,” he says. “We just got started on beans. We’ve probably done 80 to 100 acres.”

BUTLER, Mo. — In West Central Missouri, Dane Diehl says harvest became “a full go” by mid-September for corn.

With a year of wide weather variations, corn yields understandably reflected that.