{"id":400678,"date":"2026-04-16T00:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T00:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/400678\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T00:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T00:16:10","slug":"winter-drought-troubling-farmers-well-owners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/400678\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter drought troubling farmers, well owners"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cedric MacLeod recently took stock of his cattle farm’s hay reserve and found he only has enough to feed his cows for a few more weeks.<\/p>\n

All he can do now, he said, is hope for drought conditions to let up. He needs significant rain to replenish the grass in his pasture in time for the spring farming season.<\/p>\n

“It’s made it really tight,” said MacLeod, who owns Local Valley Beef in Long Settlement, north of Woodstock. “We’re all right on the knife edge here until the grass comes back alive.”<\/p>\n

Despite some rain in the forecast, much of the province remains in a severe drought, based on the latest numbers from the Canadian Drought Monitor.<\/p>\n

According to a New Brunswick hydrogeologist who has been studying the lack of snow and rain levels hitting the ground this winter, it could mean another season of struggles for farmers coming off of last summer’s dry conditions.<\/p>\n

“I think if we have something similar to last year, you’re going to start to see major restrictions be put on water users,” Matthew Alexander said.<\/p>\n

Precipitation levels were down from seasonal averages by about 30 per cent in January and 10 to 20 per cent in February, according to Alexander. <\/p>\n

March saw some improvement with the Atlantic provinces getting at least 85 per cent of normal precipitation.<\/p>\n

WATCH | N.B. water levels remain low:\"\"<\/p>\n

Farmers worried after winter drought<\/p>\n

Following last year\u2019s dry summer, a lack of precipitation over the winter has some farmers concerned.<\/p>\n

Conditions have reduced the amount of heavy, compact snow \u2014 known as snowpack\u2014 that typically melts over time, elevating river levels and seeping into the soil.<\/p>\n

“We haven’t achieved anywhere near flood levels within the Saint John River basin,” Alexander said.<\/p>\n

Farmers learning to catch ‘every drop of rain’<\/p>\n

Alexander said about less than a third of precipitation actually reaches groundwater and well systems. The rest of it runs off or evaporates before it can be absorbed.<\/p>\n

And farmers like MacLeod are forced to adapt their practices in their fields and pastures as a result.<\/p>\n

It’s a common practice for cattle farmers to hoard hay when drought hits and they can’t rely on grazing, MacLoed said. But there’s added work and cost to relying on hay for feed.<\/p>\n

“Obviously the the best and cheapest way is to have them harvest it themselves,” he said. <\/p>\n

“We actually don’t have a forage crop insurance here in the province, which is something we’ve been looking at for some time.” <\/p>\n

Information Morning – Fredericton16:00Spring farming<\/p>\n

Farmers are among those welcoming the rain this week.\u00a0We checked in with Cedric MacLeod and Tim Livingstone to hear how they are faring with continued drought conditions across the province, and how they are preparing for the coming months.<\/p>\n

MacLeod, who is also a soil scientist, said last season’s drought combined with a similar outlook so far this year has forced him to adapt his practices on the farm.<\/p>\n

He has moved away from tilling his fields because that removes any moisture from an already dry soil. He also plants legumes, he said, which have strong roots that drill deep into the soil to extract more water.<\/p>\n

“What we’re trying to do here is make sure that our soils receive every drop of rain that comes from the sky,” he said. “Water is quickly becoming our limiting factor for all food production.” <\/p>\n

Installing irrigation systems is also an option to combat drought, but it’s no cheap feat.<\/p>\n

If you’re going to put in a deep commercial well, you’re probably looking at a quarter million to half at least,” MacLeod said, adding that irrigation rigs to spray fields known as pivots can also cost half a million dollars.<\/p>\n

\"ATim Livingstone, who owns Strawberry Hill Farms north of Woodstock, said he plants 50 different vegetable crops each year as an insurance policy in case drought impacts yields. (Shane Fowler\/CBC News)<\/p>\n

For smaller farming operations like Tim Livingstone’s vegetable farm in Pembrooke, north of Woodstock, it could take a decade to save up the money to pay for that technology.<\/p>\n

“And where do I get that money from, especially following a drought year?” Livingstone, who owns Strawberry Hill Farms, said.<\/p>\n

Memramcook expanding municipal water system<\/p>\n

Residents in the Village of Memramcook, southeast of Moncton, are no stranger to dealing with droughts and dry wells.<\/p>\n

Mayor Maxime Bourgeois said about 50 per cent of residents in the large rural community still rely on wells for their homes and hobby farms. Many of them were vocal to Bourgeois about their struggles during last summer’s drought, he said.<\/p>\n

It’s why the municipality plans to begin construction work next month to shift 150 residents off of wells and onto the municipal water system.<\/p>\n

\"AMaxime Bourgeois, the mayor of Memramcook, said the municipality plans to begin construction work in May to add 150 residents to its water system. (Babatund\u00e9 Lawani\/Radio-Canada)<\/p>\n

“We received about $4 million from the federal government and $2.8 [million], I believe, from the provincial government,” he said about the project.<\/p>\n

The village set up a temporary fill station for residents who did not have water last summer. It’s spending between $75,000 and $100,000 to install a new one that won’t require any staff to be on site to run it.<\/p>\n

“It should be how hopefully installed by sometime mid-summer,” he said. “It will be sort of like pay as you go.”<\/p>\n

Alexander said it could take months \u2014 even several years \u2014 for the groundwater system to fully recover from persisting drought conditions across the province.<\/p>\n

For MacLeod and other farmers who will rely on their spring season to make a living this year, “there’s not much we can do is besides wait.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cedric MacLeod recently took stock of his cattle farm’s hay reserve and found he only has enough to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-400678","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}