Logan County is bursting with corn.

With about three-quarters of the corn crop in, local grain elevators can't keep up.

"(The harvest) is big and it's hard for us to handle," said Paul Seaman, manager at East Lincoln Farmers' Grain Co. "We've been having to close down early, and it's going to get worse as we get closer to the end."

Seaman said his company opened its new 900,000-bushel Johnston's Siding bunker between Lincoln and Beason this year. The grain company also has a bunker at Beason that holds 185,000 bushels.

But it's not enough for this harvest.

"It's a lot bigger than what the storage system can handle this year, and we're going to struggle to keep up," Seaman said. "We're going to be shutting down a lot more than in the past."

That means elevator works will stop accepting grain from farmers while they work on creating more space. They're selling grain to processors and transferring it between facilities to make room.

Seaman said corn yields are about 20 percent higher than they were last year. In addition to that, Logan County farmers planted about 15 percent more corn than in 2006.

"That's a lot of grain for us to handle," Seaman said.

John Fulton, unit leader of the Logan County Cooperative Extension Service, said yields have been rather variable - but high overall.

"The low-end has been about 150-bushel corn and the high end is over 200," he said.

The average yield in Logan County last year was 171 bushels per acre, topping the Illinois average of 163 bushels per acre.

Logan County's record yield was 189 bushels per acre, set in 2003 - and that record might be about to fall.

"The other thing is we're probably about 12 days ahead of last year's harvest progress," Seaman said. "It's coming at us faster."

That's partially because dry weather forced farmers to hurry to get their crops to the elevators. Farmers get paid by weight, and drier crops weigh less. But with elevators closing, producers have no choice but to wait.

"Basically, (farmers) are being held up by the elevators, the handling system," Fulton said. "It's created some backlogs."

Daniel Ginter, who farms near Elkhart, said the harvest is going well overall, with "obviously excellent drying weather. Almost too dry with some test weights coming in low."

"The rain (Tuesday) night should be a relief to those that have been working non-stop since Labor Day," Ginter said. "A brief breather helps with keeping farm accidents down and the ability to service equipment."

Fulton said part of the reason farmers planted so much more corn this year is because of the price differential between corn and soy beans during planting season. He also said corn prices have taken a hit recently.

"Two days ago they looked pretty good," he said. "They've crashed since then."

Seaman said prices aren't too much of a hot topic right now. With the better yields, farmers "aren't grumbling about prices too much right now."

With so much grain to handle, prices just aren't at the top of farmers' list of worries.

"I think most areas are finding better yields than they thought," Fulton said. "It's just tough to handle good yields, and then throw in another 30,000 to 40,000 acres of corn in our county; it gets really tough."

Although seed size has been pretty small, soybean yields also have been better than anticipated, Fulton said.

"You have to ask, 'What if?,'" Fulton said. "Yields are good to excellent to begin with, and if we could have gotten one more rain, where would it have been?"