After an unusually dry spring, Lambton welcomed some rain Friday.

But the same couldn’t be said to the south, where six inches of rain fell damaging almost every crop imaginable.

“Most areas of Lambton are very, very dry,” said Kevin Marriott, Lambton’s Warden and a local director of the Grain Farmers of Lambton right before the rain started. “This is going to be a drought breaker,” he says, noting wheat is about to be harvested and too much rain would ruin the quality of the grain.

For Lambton it was a drought breaker, with one to two inches of rain reported in Central Lambton – enough to cause local streams to rise, but causing little damage.

Just a few kilometres to the south, in Dresden, farmers are assessing the damage.

“The tomato crop without question is severely damaged in a lot of areas,” says the president of the Kent Federation of Agriculture, Louis Roesch.

Dresden farmers are reporting between five and six inches of rain south of the river. Mark Richards, who is north of the Sydenham near Dresden, got about two inches of rain and estimates about 10 per cent of his tomato crop is underwater.

“I don’t think there’s going to be many tomato growers in Chatham-Kent who are not affected by this rain.”

Roesch estimates half of the crop could be destroyed. https://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=https://petrolialambtonindependent.ca/2021/06/28/tomato-crop-heavily-damaged-after-heavy-rains/&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=105&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=21