Karina Jones is a real-life ranch wife in the Nebraska Sandhills and one of the most highly sought-after speakers in the cattle industry nationwide!
El Nun-ya! Thanks for joining me today on Ranch Raised.
I can try to give words of uplifting wisdom but the truth is, the stress of the drought in Nebraska, is all consuming. It looms over every decision we are making. We go to bed thinking about it and we look out the window every morning, seeing this sea of cows and instantly think, “What are we going to do?”
For months, I have been grasping to every hope that national meteorologists have been giving us that moisture will return to our area. They started baiting my hope in January when they said the Pacific Ocean was showing a warming trend but the snow never came. I mean they are right, every drought has to break. But, for some reason they just can not seem to nail down when El Nino is going to arrive. Instead, we have stuck with El-Nun-ya for too long. We just came through the driest winter Western Nebraska has ever recorded. I mean, there wasn’t much to record. April and May are our money making months. That is when we usually see the ample spring moisture that our topsoil banks on to grow grass and crops. Only this year the weeks continue to go by no significant moisture. The wind and 80 degree days we experienced last month only further battered our grassland and delicate Sandhills conditions. May has turned cooler. We’ve had overcast days. But we haven’t hardly measured any real moisture in the rain gauge.
So, we wait and worry. We watch as neighbors send more cows to town. I’ll be honest, our fall herd is next on the chopping block.”We already saved back only half as many heifers as we have been. Their breeding season might be cut short, too. We keep watching the forecast telling ourselves, “it has to rain sometime.”
karina@youragnetwork.com or visit facebook.com/ranchraisedwithkarinajones
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