Harvest of summer crops has generally been a success for Suffolk farmers, the agriculture extension agent reports, but cotton and soybean harvests remain at about the halfway point.

“The ground moisture level is pretty good,” Marcus Williams said, adding the ground for the most part has been firm enough to support harvesting equipment to travel.

Previously, Williams reported acreages this season for Suffolk of about 9,589 acres of cotton and 18,202 acres of soybeans — Suffolk’s largest crop by a considerable margin.

About 14,356 acres of grain corn has already been harvested, he said. “From what I heard, farms either got a chance to sell it or are storing it in silos” to wait for prices to improve or because they couldn’t move it all.

This year’s peanut crop of 3,950 acres, which was down this year due to a decrease in subsidies, has been “dug and combined,” Williams said.

Farmers dig their fields first, forming rows of peanut plants above the ground before a combine harvests them, he explained.

“Peanuts went pretty well,” Williams said. “We had a pretty good harvest this year, even with an overage from last year.”

Williams said the harvest of five to 10 acres of sorghum planted along Carolina Road, the extent of Suffolk’s sorghum crop, “went pretty well.”

All in all, he said, “there were no losses reported to myself” from pests, disease or anything else for all summer crops.

But Suffolk farmers aren’t putting their feet up yet for the holidays, he said. For one thing, they’ll be waiting anxiously for the winter wheat now being planted to emerge from the earth, praying for just the right amount of rain to help it grow without washing it out.

“Most people will get into that once they get finished with cotton or soybeans,” Williams said.

He said they’ll also plant cover crops such as clover or rye to keep the soil in place through the winter and, for those who choose to work it back into the earth later, inject some nutrients into their fields.

Farmers will also be winterizing equipment to make sure it’s working right and well oiled for the next growing season, he said.