Sean Dengler.

Recently, I drove through rural northwest Iowa. This part of the state is like physics, I do not have much experience with it. One realizes most of Iowa is not flat until they drive through northwest Iowa. When driving between Gillett Grove and Havelock, the eye can see from north to south and east to west without one degree of land change. Every other part of the state has an occasional hill making a difference in the landscape but not northwest Iowa.

I made this drive a couple of years ago around the same time. One part stood out, the lack of harvest progress. Compared to 2024, when I was still farming, this drive made me nervous after seeing at least a third of fields being harvested while we were yet to get the party started. While driving past the towns of Pocahontas, Palmer, and Otho this year, saying 5% of the fields were harvested would be generous.

All this rain has created a standstill. Hopefully, by the time this piece is published, more progress will be made. Water stood in fields along the routes. Decisions will be made on what fields will need to be harvested, and what parts of fields will need to be left for later or abandoned. For the parts of the field where water stood during my drive, the chance the soil will be harvest-ready in a week is doubtful.

Another part standing out on this drive through the second-most productive agriculture congressional district in the country was fields of soybeans looking black. What was also fascinating was the number of soybean fields yet to drop all their leaves. Typically, most soybeans are out of the field by this point on the calendar. With the amount of moisture these soybeans saw in September, and the lack of high temperatures and high winds like in recent years, the chance of drying out in these conditions was slim to none.

While all black soybean fields had no leaves, plenty of other fields still had their leaves, looking a long way from harvest. This wide variance of soybean progress is on opposite sides of the spectrum. Of the small percentage of harvested fields, corn held a slight lead, possibly due to farmers trying to chop silage.

Similarities between northwest Iowa and northern Tama County existed as the drive went past an old, abandoned school for Lake Center. Like the old Geneseo school, this school rose out of the corn and soybean fields on the corner of a county highway intersection. Farmsteads dot the landscape with machinery chomping at the bit to get into the fields while other farmsteads have long since abandoned their original purpose and have not seen a harvest in many years.

Whether a working or no longer working farm, the amount of rain these farms and their adjacent fields have taken in is excessive and unlike many other years. Hopefully, on my next trip through northwest Iowa, these fields will mostly, if not all, be harvested. The good or bad part is I am not traveling through northwest Iowa for at least months, if not years. These farmers will have plenty of time before I can report back.

Sean Dengler is a writer, comedian, now-retired beginning farmer, and host of the Pandaring Talk podcast who grew up on a farm between Traer and Dysart. You can reach him at sean.h.dengler@gmail.com.