The start of Kansas wheat harvest this year had a lot in common with fall crop planting season, with efforts to get the job done shoveled between bouts of weather too wet to get anything done.

Kiowa's OK Co-op in Barber County usually gets the first loads of wheat in the Kansas harvest. It saw a few loads on the afternoon on June 6 before overnight rains shut everyone down. Sumner County was seeing the beginning of a few loads as well, but rain was in the forecast.

Farmers Equity Co-op in Isabel, also a Barber County location that sees the beginning of harvest in Kansas, reported conditions too wet for cutting.

The prospect of a slow, soggy harvest is just the latest in a string of worries for Kansas wheat growers. Early drought caused poor fall emergence and sparse stands across much of western Kansas especially. Fall emergence of wheat streak mosaic raised red flags, with some producers in Lane and Scott counties calling insurance adjusters to zero out wheat fields in November and December.

A late freeze hit central and north-central Kansas hard. Wheat streak mosaic came roaring back as fields began to grow in western Kansas — and pretty much anywhere else in the state with uncontrolled volunteer. Then came the freak blizzard of the last days of April, which dumped up to 2 feet of snow across the western third of the state.

Related:Wheat Harvest 2017 – Low yields, fewer acres in southern Plains

The damage that weather event did to the crop won't be fully known until the combines roll in that part of the state, but producers continue to be concerned about the impact on both yield and quality.

In the aftermath of the blizzard, more concerns about wheat streak mosaic have arisen with hundreds acres of wheat being wiped out by the viral disease.

So as Kansas enters the third week of June and pushes toward Father's Day, which is typically the height of harvest, combines are moving in fits and starts and watching a weather forecast full of "chance of thunderstorms."

It could be a long, soggy harvest.