Farmers in northern Indiana and southern Michigan were hoping for rain before recent storms left their once thirsty crops waterlogged, especially in low areas containing more standing water.

Now, they’re hoping for things to dry out before it rains again to avoid further damage to their crops.

“There could be more extreme losses if the water doesn’t start dropping a little more quickly,” said Matt Schafer, a corn and soybean producer from LaCrosse, about 30 miles from the southern tip of Lake Michigan.

“We’ve had an ample amount. We don’t need any more,” said Ken Seifert, who raises corn and soybeans on about 2,000 acres in Three Oaks and Galien in southwest Michigan.

Schafer said his corn and soybeans fields in southern La Porte and Porter counties received nearly 3 and 4 inches of rain Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That’s in addition to precipitation ranging from 1.6 to 3.7 inches in his fields the previous weekend.

Some farmers in both regions were pumping water from once low drainage ditches to help alleviate standing water in their saturated fields.

Ironically, parts of both states were classified as being in a drought prior to the rainfall. Conditions were not quite as dry in northern Indiana and southern Michigan but crops were starting to need to water.

“We were kind of always on the edge of being too dry and now we’re probably past being on the edge of too wet,” Schafer said.

“It was time for some rain but we don’t need any more rain for a couple of weeks,” Seifert said.

Schafer said some of his crops might not survive or suffer from stunted growth depending on how quickly the standing water recedes. A spell of hot, dry weather would then be needed to fully recover.

Seifert described a similar situation in his corn and soybeans fields, which received up to 2 inches of precipitation and close to an equal amount of rain the previous weekend.

He said all of the storms combined brought about twice as much rain as his crops actually needed. “Two inches would have been ideal,” he said.

Seifert said he considers himself lucky, though, because rainfall amounts were much heavier in nearby areas like Baroda.

A portion of Schafer’s crop is close to the Kankakee River, which was still rising a day after the rains stopped.

The Galien River runs through some of the fields Seifert farms with help from his sons.

Both men have seen the rivers higher in the past but they did go up enough to spill into some of their fields. “A couple of weeks of hot weather is what we need,” Seifert said.

Schafer said some farmers nearby were already irrigating prior to the storms and he was about to before the clouds opened up.

At one point during the height of the storms, Schafer said there was even flooding in some of his fields on flat ground. “The rain came down so fast it took a while to soak in,” he said.