A late stint of sunny weather is giving farmers a boost during the autumn harvest.

“God sent us something these past couple weeks,” said Randy Smith of Smith’s Farms in Washington Township. “The wet summer could’ve been a lot more disastrous.”

Smith said July and August were cold and filled with irritating rains.

It’s something that has bugged farmers across the county.

“I call it nuisance rains,” said Glenn Studebaker, owner of Northview Farms in Worth Township. “It would only rain a quarter of an inch at a time.”

Smith said the rainy weather throughout the summer made him nervous for weeks.

But the past month has been kind to farmers’ crops.

“September was the nicest month we’ve had all summer,” he said. “Hopefully we can look forward to a decent fall.”

While the summer wasn’t full of the heaviest of rain storms, it was filled with cloudy, rainy days that hid the sun from the crops.

“That constant small rain makes it tough to make hay,” Smith said, adding it was one of the more difficult summers for hay he’s experienced.

Ken Metrick, owner of Harvest View Farm in Connoquenessing Township, said the cool, wet summer took a toll on his tomatoes.

“This summer was a little wetter than we would’ve liked,” he said. “It makes for a lot of disease. Tomatoes were probably hit the hardest.”

Metrick grows a variety of vegetables on his property, as well as fruits like tomatoes, apples and strawberries. He’s now working on harvesting pumpkins, potatoes, apples, fall squash.

“There were some days the sun never came up,” he said. “These plants need to dry out. It makes it pretty tough.”

Andy Gaver, a conservationist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Butler, said the past couple weeks of warm weather certainly helped the crops.

“We had cooler weather most of August,” he said. “Farmers were concerned there was not enough grow time.”

Gaver said the cool weather was detrimental to some crops susceptible to disease.

“If the sun isn’t out, it can’t burn the dew off in a timely manner,” he said.

Gaver said even when it was warm, the wet weather still lingered.

“If it wasn’t cool and wet, it was humid,” he said. “That can promote just as much disease.”

While the cool weather made for some concern, Metrick said the recent sun has aided his crops and has helped sustain a solid year.

“It’s going well now,” he said. “All and all it was a good year.”

Studebaker said the cool summer delayed his harvest season.

“Corn and beans haven’t matured enough yet,” he said. “I would think we’re a week to 10 days behind.”

But Studebaker agreed that September was a blessing to the crops.

“The last 10 days was the best weather we had all summer,” he said.

Even farmers whose crops have caught up to schedule are working tirelessly through the autumn.

“It’s a busy time of the year,” Metrick said.

While the time to harvest most crops has come, it’s also time to plant wheat.

“There are good soil conditions right now,” Gaver said.

Farmers are hoping for a nicer winter than the previous one. The bitter cold winter last year delayed the planting season this spring and took its toll on perennial crops.

But Smith said he hasn’t been looking too far in advance at the weather predictions.

“I try to stay away from that stuff,” he said. “It gets to be too much guess work. You’ll make yourself crazy.”

Smith said the weather isn’t something that can be changed anyway.

“You just have to deal with what you got,” he said. “You can’t predict it, and you can’t control it.”