'The damage is done': Farmers praying for another million dollar rain

Some much needed rain is still needed after some spotty summer showers across southwestern Ontario Sunday.

Farmers in Chatham-Kent and Windsor-Essex believe it’s too soon to say if the precipitation received was enough to produce a bumper crop later this season.

“Hopefully it's not too late,” said Leon LeClair near Pain Court, Ont.

“Still optimistic, you know the damage has been done,” LeClair explained. “We've missed too many rains for too long. The crop still does look good, but the damage is done.”

LeClair said some areas received drastically more rain than other nearby places during the weekend event.

LeClair told CTV News he believes this is the driest summer in southwestern Ontario since 1988 adding crops are experiencing stress from drought.

“When it's drought conditions, you worry yourself to death,” LeClair said. “When you get flooded, you go broke because if it's floods, your crop is completely gone. A drought situation? Well it's amazing what a crop can do. But it worries you to death at night man!”

“Again the optimist, next year will be better. And it will be better and maybe this year will be fine. It's a long way to go. But it's worrying us to death.”

Others echo similar sentiments, hopeful this week’s hot weather will produce a rainfall reprieve in the region.

“They say crops don't like wet feet, and I don't really think their feet are wet right now,” said Dresden area agriculture economist Philip Shaw. “But we could use some more rain in the next little while.”

Shaw said there are many farmers who didn’t receive enough rain over the weekend, concerned with what a weeks’ worth of temperatures above 30C will do to crops.

“I think people are thankful for what they got. But it came at a very critical time for corn because corn will be going into pollination very soon,” Shaw explained. “It might be late for some but it's a very welcome thing to get that type of moisture, especially in the middle of the summer and especially when we were so dry over the last few weeks.”

“Let's hope that some of the damage that was done can be undone or let's hope it wasn't as bad as we thought but it was getting pretty critical, no question about it before this moisture came overnight.”

The Kent Federation of Agriculture president, Jay Cunningham told CTV news it’s too early to predict if this season’s dry conditions will negatively impact yields.

“Pretty much everything had started to react negatively to not having enough moisture,” he said.

Cunningham said the rain that did fall over the weekend came at an opportune time but that more is needed to counter consecutive days of heat.

“Can we use some more in another week or so? Probably, but we'll ask,” he said. “Whether we'll get it or not, that's up to Mother Nature.”