Recent rain restores optimism for Saskatchewan farmers

Farmers across Saskatchewan were happy to see the rain start to fall over the last few days — Mark Yaroshko among them.

He farms near Biggar and said the moisture in his soil had been non-existent. He said it was so dry before the rain came that they had to stop seeding.

“We describe our farm as sandy like the beach at Waikiki,” joked Yaroshko.

He got about 58 millimetres, which he said will be fine for about two weeks.

“Unless we see (temperatures around) 30 degrees again,” he said, “but we probably won’t see 30 degrees now until July.”

Yaroshko was hoping to be able to get back to seeding on Wednesday; he has about 40 per cent left to go.

He’d been able to get his peas and wheat in the ground already, as they could be planted deeper where there was still some moisture.

“But the canola and the flax, they need to be in that 3/4 of an inch deep area and, I mean, there certainly wasn’t any moisture near there,” explained Yaroshko.

He said some farmers took the chance and planted in dryer ground but he said that would have been a last resort for his farm.

Yaroshko said he should still be able to plant and get a crop out this year, and he credit modern farming techniques to conserve moisture and topsoil for that.

“Disaster was averted this year because of our methods that we’ve started to use in the past decade or so,” said Yaroshko.

“If this was earlier farming techniques we wouldn’t have a hope now. We’d be done for the season. We’d be looking at some fall seeded crops or something else.”