It’s promising to be another challenging harvest season in northeast South Dakota. The area is soaked and farmers in some spots aren't sure how they'll get their crops off the field.

Aberdeen has received more than six inches of rain since the beginning of September. Farther northeast, they've had more and that's adding to ground that was already soaked.

First was the wet spring, then came the wet summer.

"There's just nowhere for this water to go," Steve Vietor said.

Now fall is making it worse. Vietor farms with his family near Britton. They chop corn to make silage for their cattle to eat.

"Usually by now, we're just about done. And we've just barely scratched the surface on getting started," Vietor said.

If the expected frost comes this weekend, the corn will probably be too dry to make silage any more. But the beans could benefit.

"I'm hoping for a hard, hard frost without any snow," Vietor said.

That would allow them to travel over frozen ground to harvest crops that now sit in fields so soggy a combine would just sink in.  At this point, the Vietors figure they could get to a fourth of their beans.

Corn is sitting in water, too. And with water running over multiple roads, just getting from field to field will be tough.

When farmers faced late corn and heavy rains last year, they hoped things would only improve this year.

"But it's going to be worse this year, by a lot," Vietor said.

The Vietors are already counting on harvesting corn in the snow. But with beans low to the ground, they're hoping for the best despite a forecast that threatens the possibility of dumping some already this weekend.

"I don't want to see it for a long time," Vietor said.

Spring to fall, it's been too wet. There's little to do now but wait to see if winter will bail farmers in the area out of this mess.

All the mud is hard on cattle in the area, too. The Vietors are trying to ship theirs out as quick as possible to avoid too much loss.