Southwest producers were thrown a bit of a curveball to start the season, but recent conditions are making up for that.
A mid-April snowstorm put a damper on anyone hoping to begin their seeding operations later in the month.
Instead, most producers began in May and nearly all in the southwest are now finished according to the Saskatchewan weekly crop report released on Thursday.
Timely and widespread rains have travelled through the area the last few weeks helping supplement the freshly planted crop.
"Now that they did get a bit of the moisture, some of that crop has come up and it is looking really good," Matt Struthers, a crops extension specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, said. "The topsoil for both cropland and hay and pasture have improved and that is very promising."
The Swift Current Research and Development Centre has recorded 95 millimetres of precipitation this spring to date. That figure is on track to be the most since 2020 in that timeframe. However, once the summer officially begins in a week and a half, Struthers believes a lot more moisture will be needed to combat the heat waves.
"Hopefully we get the rain now that we know that's going to carry the crop over in July because we all know how hot and dry July can get and that really makes or breaks a crop," he said.
Some recent localized thunderstorms have passed by causing a bit of crop damage, but Struthers hasn't heard of any catastrophic situations.
"There was some hail and some flooding damage," he said. "I know some producers in the southwest where it's been so dry, they'll take those big storms just to get a bit of moisture."
And the next course of action for some producers will be making their first cut of hay later this month.
"With the weather, we've been getting, the hay fields should be kind of growing like a weed with the heat and the moisture," he said. "Especially after the last couple of years where they've been a bit slow. I think those hay fields and crops will be kind of accelerated."