N.S. farmers fear unhealthy soil caused by last year’s drought

Nova Scotia farmers are working to prepare for growing season after last year’s drought proved incredibly damaging to their crops. Paul Hollingsworth reports.

If you can eat it, Josh Oulton says he grows it on his farm in Port Williams, N.S.

“I grow everything from apples to zucchini,” said Oulton who also grows and is a dairy and pork farmer.

Oulton is hoping for a prosperous growing season, especially after last summer when it was a non-stop effort, pouring water on his fragile crops. The summer of 2025 featured what Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reported was statistically a one-in-50-year drought, with some parts of Nova Scotia receiving only 40 per cent of normal precipitation levels.

“We pumped out 300 gallons a minute, or something like that,” said Oulton, who added the drought of 2025 caught Nova Scotia farmers off guard causing major damage to his crops. “We ended up with small apples, small peaches, an almost nonexistent carrot crop, our organic carrots also did not do well, and we did not get a lot of beets.”

As he continues to work his land, Oulton fears the unknown because it is difficult to measure the health of the soil caused by last year’s drought.

“Nobody really knows because we haven’t in this generation experienced a drought like this,” said Oulton. “It truly was a severe drought.”

According to retired Environment Canada climatologist Dave Phillips, there appears to be good news on the horizon. The long-term forecast for Nova Scotia in May, June and July, looks positive.

“So that would be the beginning of the growing season and the planting season,” said Phillips. “It is showing it to be warmer than normal, but with more precipitation than normal.”

However, Phillips cautions, long-range forecast models are not always the most reliable.

Either way, Oulton said he is ready for this coming summer and better prepared than last year.

“We have all of our irrigation going again and our ponds cleaned out,” said Oulton, who feels the farmers who live in his community, view weather and climate as a difficult balance as another dry spell would be devastating, but a wet summer could be even worse.

“I will take a drought over rain any day because then it rains like that you can’t do anything and there’s nothing you can do, other than watch your crop die from too much rain,” he said.

Oulton’s wish is for a normal season with moderate weather this summer to help produce a bumper crop.