ST. LOUIS (AP) — U.S. farmers who could only watch helplessly this spring as storm after storm left their fields a muddy mess took to their tractors en masse last week and planted a record amount of corn acreage, even in areas where conditions are still far from perfect.

Until last week, Corn Belt farmers were enduring their slowest planting season in decades because of the wet weather. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in its weekly crop progress update that 71 percent of the corn crop in key grain states had been sown as of Sunday. That’s up from just 28 percent a week earlier, and it brought the figure closer in line to the 79 percent average that farmers had planted by this point in the season over the previous five years.