Spring snowfall comes as a relief for Sask. farmers

A spring dump of snow on Saskatchewan was welcomed by Rustie Sobchuk, a farmer in Lang.

“I was bundling my two little kids up yesterday (and) I thought to myself, ‘I am fine getting whipped with snow’ because I thought we need this. We so desperately needed this,” Sobchuk said Tuesday.

“We need a good soaking.”

Speaking to the Greg Morgan Morning Show, Sobchuk said the last few years have been dry, calling it a “miracle or blessing” whenever enough moisture arrives at the right time.

She said the region has been in a “water crisis,” with many rural municipalities closing their dugouts.

“We have many dugouts that are dry. We have neighbours that don’t have a single dugout with a lick of water in it to even fill their sprayers to spray the crops,” Sobchuk said.

Her father is a cattle farmer. He needs the water for livestock and also for pasture land.

For many farmers, Sobchuk said the snowfall comes at a good time with seeding around the corner.

“A lot of them are saying they still want to get in by the end of April, if not a little bit earlier, just so that they can stick the seed in something moist,” she said.

“We were looking at seeding into dry dirt so we’ll be seeding here even with all the snow.”

The moisture the snow will give farmers and their fields may be a little late, but it’s welcomed.

“It’s the snow we expected during the winter but now we’re getting it early spring here, which is still good,” said crops extension specialist Matthew Struthers within the Ministry of Agriculture.

He said the mid-April weather event has relieved a lot of stress for farmers. It has been unusually dry across Saskatchewan for more than a year, especially in the province’s south.

Two centimetres of snow equals two millimetres of water, Struthers explained, so the recent snow may still not be quite enough, but he said “every little bit helps.”

“It takes quite a bit of snow to produce quite a bit of water. After the snow disappears I’d still like to see a couple light rains or a nice heavy one. That’s going to help fill dugouts and creeks and just help everyone all around,” he said.

How much moisture is needed will partly depend on what kind of soil a farmer has. Struthers said sandy soils will need more water compared to clay soils. It also depends on what’s being planted.

“Some crops are heavy drinkers,” he pointed out.

Seeding for many producers really launches in late April or early May, though Struthers said some in the Weyburn area have already started.

However, he said this snow shouldn’t leave behind any significant damage to anything that has been put in the ground in that area already, since the seed is likely to have been planted deeper.

The first provincial crop report is expected in about two weeks.