Typically this time of year, you see tractors on the road heading to their fields, but the weather is making that difficult.

Fox 55's caleb saylor has more on how farmers are doing so early in the year.

The saying "knee high by july is typically a good indication of a good corn crop, but for that to happen, farmers are supposed to be knee deep in work by now, but some cant even get out into their fields.

The culprit?

Mother nature, heavy rain and colder than average temperatures have forced many farmers to stay inside.bill horan with the purdue extension office in wells county says farmers will have to wait a bit longer to get planting "we're getting more rain this week, so that's going to set us back another 4, 5 days, even if it stopped raining today, before people get out into the field.

So, it's going to be a late planting season for sure."a late planting season has some drawbacks when it comes to yield potential, which are forcing some farmers into make tough choices "at this point, people are probably making decisions on whether they're going to be shifting from some fields of corn to soybeans because of the later planting or they may be shifting varieties of corn, going with shorter season corn compared to longer season corn."

Switching to soybeans or to a shorter growing season corn will help maximize the yield, meaning farmers maximize profits, but late april and early may is the best time to plant corn.

For soybeans, it's up until early june.last year farmers had trouble with rain as with the year before and those were record and near record years for yield and there's a lot of the growing season left to go so it's not time to panic yet, but if farmers can't get into the fields soon, a lower yield combined with low commodity prices for corn and soybeans could mean they struggle to be successful "to expect another record yield almost 3 years in a row is probably not likely.

So, the scenario is not real favorable this year being profitable for farmers"in bluffton, caleb saylor, fox 55 news