By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

PARK -- It's not hard filling an elevator to overflowing, what with the corn, soybean and grain sorghum yields that northwest Kansas farmers have been seeing.

The yields are outstanding, even though few farmers are quick to say just how good they really are.

That's why it didn't take long for Hi Plains Co-op at Park to pile about 20,000 bushels of corn on the ground just east of the elevator, according to elevator operator Derek Herl.

It's actually the second pile of corn for the elevator.

The first was growing, but was halted in its tracks when the rains started falling in early October.

That gave Herl time to pick up the corn and ship it elsewhere.

"This is round two," he said.

The latest pile was started Tuesday afternoon and continued growing as farmers started bringing in thousand-bushel truckloads of corn.

Herl had already reserved a spot for grain sorghum alongside the corn pile. But the only thing there was grass, as no one had started harvesting milo in the Park area.

Corn needs to dry down to about 17 percent moisture, while milo needs to hit 15 percent to store.

Herl said he's not heard any yield estimates on either crop, but he expects the dryland corn to produce nearly 130 bushels per acre.

"That's a rough estimate I guess," he said.

The problem for Herl and other elevator operators is the amount of wheat they still have in storage.

All told, he said, nearly a half-million bushels of wheat remains in storage at the Park elevator.

The wheat is filling two steel bins, and there's some in the adjoining concrete elevator.

While the above-average temperatures were enough to send farmers into the field to start cutting fall crops, Gove County farmer Daryl Kopriva would like to see even more drying weather.

"We need about two more good weeks of drying weather," he said as a combine was fired up and started munching through a field of corn alongside Hackberry Creek west of the city of Gove.

Harvest progress was stalled for most of October by rain, in some cases heavy rain.

"I don't mind the rain," Kopriva was quick to say.

Rain is, after all, the lifeblood for a farmer, and Gove County has struggled in recent years with a lack of rainfall.

Now about halfway through the harvest, Kopriva said he has no milo to harvest this year.

Last year was a different story, but a strong weather system ended that experience.

"We had beautiful milo," Kopriva said of his operation last year. "It was gorgeous, and it fell flat on its face."

High winds laid the crop down, making it difficult to impossible to harvest.

This year, corn is the crop of choice, and the results are good.

"It's good," he said, intentionally dodging the question of how many bushels it might be yielding. "It's above average."

Everything that didn't get hammered by hail, he added.

"This was hailed," Kopriva said of the irrigated corn field they were cutting. "It was beat up pretty bad in July."

But it was able to bounce back and was expected to show good yields.

"We just started cutting irrigated corn today," he said. "The only reason is its too muddy where we wanted to cut dryland."