Widespread rain over the weekend has painted a smile on farmers faces throughout the region as the season’s prospects go from extremely marginal to potentially excellent.

With falls of 20mm recorded around Temora and Grenfell, increasing to 30mm around Cowra, Boorowa and Cootamundra it seems Young actually received the lion’s share of the fall.

Reports around Young indicate anything from 35mm up to a fantastic 54mm recorded by Andrew Cusack near Galong.

Canola and wheat crops which days ago were looking precarious are now almost guaranteed a pass with the header though every further drop of rain will add millions to the region’s harvest.

“We were on a knife-edge right up until this rain,” Mr Cusack said.

“This will now give the canola, which is just finishing flowering, the opportunity to fill out the seeds with hopefully a lot of oil.”

Don McFarlane of ‘Stump Jump’ on Memagong Lane, 10km out on the Temora Road can barely contain his excitement at this most recent fall.

“The timing couldn’t be more perfect, for both the canola and the wheat,” Mr McFarlane said.

“Looking back on the season we’ve all been lasting from shower to shower and just a couple of weeks ago everyone was worrying that the crops would turn before the next rain.

“Although more rain is needed to finish out the season, this came at exactly the right time during flowering,” Mr McFarlane said.

“The wheat crop now has all the moisture it needs to set a big head and aspire toward a big yield.”

Mr McFarlane adds that for his best wheat, it means a potential yield of five tonne to the hectare or more.

Department of Primary Industries Young District Agronomist Paul Parker adds that while the rain will guarantee a crop for many farmers, a good flowering coupled with a hot, dry finish would mean pinched grain and big quality downgrades.

“We need this cool spell to continue to keep evaporation and transpiration losses to a minimum,” Mr Parker said.

“There is a chance of rain this weekend and predictions of more a week later.

“More rain at that stage would be the perfect finish to what we could then call a great season.”