Recent steady rain has disrupted holiday plans and destroyed fruit crops in Central Otago, but for one sector the rain appears to have been a blessing rather than a curse.

“For the most part farmers are probably really relieved to have the rain, it’s probably set them up for a fantastic summer,” Federated Farmers Otago president Simon Davies told the Wanaka App.

Rain hit Wanaka and surrounding areas on New Year’s Day and continued most days until yesterday, with a particularly heavy downpour on January 2 alone providing roughly 24.2mm. 

Local farmers and contractors agreed with Simon: the rain was more than welcome.

Wanaka-based Green to Gold rural contractor Ferg McDonald said the rain had “set us up for a good start to the autumn season.”

Ferg employs around 14 contractor drivers to provide a full service from initial cultivation to harvesting throughout the Upper Clutha and beyond. 

This season’s baleage and silage would probably be down on last year but not by a significant margin, he said, attributing it to the drying winds experienced through November and early December when there was comparatively little rain.

Recent rain and a forecast of dry settled weather should provide good crops of hay and baleage. PHOTO: Wanaka App.

‘But now the rains have come it’s going to help a lot and feed will be able to grow again.” 

Even the pivot farmers enjoy the rain this time of the year as they turn off the pivots. “Let nature do its job,” Ferg said.

Hawea Flat farmer Sandy Urquhart said while the rain has been “a bit of a pain”, the weather has afforded excellent growth.

“Outside of us ‘irrigated people’, there wasn’t a lot of feed to make hay out of. We got a good amount of rain. The hay that gets damaged by rain is well and truly off set by the hay that will grow in January,” he said.

The Urquhart family make “a lot of hay” and do the work themselves, without employing contractors.

Sandy said the first cut of hay was done in November, and he did a “bit of our second cut” over Christmas.

Ferg said an anticipated stretch of good, settled weather soon will help those making hay, adding that the rain has also brought forward the sewing of winter crops.

Sandy’s looking forward to the fine spell to get some more tractor hours in, too.

“It looks like we’re going to get ten days of beautiful weather to make hay,” Sandy said. “It’s perfect - you can’t often ask for that.”