DRUMS, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — As the saying goes the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, and that’s true for everyone’s grass after this month.

May was incredibly dry for the area and that has put many local businesses in a tight spot ahead of the summer months.

After record dry weather through May we are now dealing with record heat to start June, that dry weather has already plagued local farms.

“What we plant with seeds, the seeds are not coming up properly. Our red beets didn’t come up well we have a bunch spinach planted and that didn’t come up at all, so were struggling with some of that stuff which is just small crops that we raise for the farm market,” explained Bryan Ochs, owner of Ochs Farm and Market.

The method of mitigation is typically irrigation, but it doesn’t solve everything

“Irrigate keeps things alive, but rain makes things grow. So we don’t irrigate 24 hours a day. We sort of shut it off. We stop late at night and then we start early in the morning and as of just the last day or two now we’ve been irrigating more than the ponds have been filling up from the spring feed,” said Ochs.

The costs add up quickly when talking about big fields.

“And when we’re irrigating it takes 225,000 gallons of water to put an inch of rain on a crop per acre. So you start thinking when you start to irrigate and 70-80 acres you using an awful lot of water just to put one inch on and you need an inch a week to grow crops,” described Ochs.

Conditions are no better at Wilkes-Barre Golf Club, with the club working overtime to keep the courses green.

“For about two weeks now without no rain, we’re out on the golf course you see how brown it is here and there. So hopefully our water supply will hold out until our next rainfall but it’s been a while,” described Mike Wildes, Assistant Director of Operations at Wilkes-Barre Golf Club.

They are fighting to keep their water sources up as well.

“They’re going down but 17 will have to be fed by rain and like I said, as long as the underground springs are running, one empties into the other and then they pump it out and it comes up there,” explained Wildes.

Conditions are expected to improve for the area over the next week.

While the forecast does improve in the week ahead, all the farmers and golf clubs Eyewitness News spoke with today said the same thing: They need a long soaking rain. Eyewitness News does not have that in the forecast anytime soon.