By Adam Eisenbarth
More moisture came at a bit of a cost for farmers in the Ponoka County.
While the recent rain was much needed, some farmers are a little behind as they’ve waited for proper conditions to get on the fields.
“Some of the spraying will be delayed due to the weather. We did need the moisture,” said Ponoka County ag services manager Shayne Steffen. “It’s still not enough but it’ll give us a good first cut of hay off and get our crops up and running now. The moisture was needed. We still need quite a bit more,”
Though he’s hoping for more precipitation, Steffen wouldn’t mind if the rain held off for a bit and the sun came out.
“If guys planted their crops before the rain that’s great. We’ve got the rain to germinate the seed but we need the warm weather too to germinate the seed and get it growing so there’ll probably be a few days of setback on growth too.”
The weather however, as farmers know, doesn’t always work with them the way they’d hope.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing things start growing here but that’s farming — you take the good with the bad and just keep on going.”
The cold weather has also had its effect and the wealth of water creates a challenge for farmers to get on the fields, though no one is complaining about that yet.
“Some of the crops, they may get hit by frost. Getting in the field is a bit difficult because with all this rain too, you can’t run your equipment in the fields or you’ll be rutting up your fields and that sort of thing but we needed the water so I think that will overshadow anything like that.”
Despite the wet conditions early this year, Steffen is hoping for more throughout the summer to restore some moisture deeper in the ground.
“The sub-soil moisture is not there. There’s moisture in about the top six to eight inches but below that there’s really nothing there to speak of so we need a lot more moisture to replenish that sub-soil.”
Nonetheless, Steffen is pleased with this soaking start to the growing season.
“I think they will (be good conditions) for the first little while as long as the moisture holds up. If we don’t get more moisture though we could be back to the way it was last year.”