- Author: Molly Nakahara
In the current, extreme drought we are experiencing in Placer and Nevada counties, making decisions about row crop production can be challenging. Many of us already employ water efficient irrigation techniques like drip and mulch. But drought planning on the farm needs to be a combination of dealing with current situations while also preparing for the high probability of future, and potentially more severe drought conditions. One production decision addresses both: growing a summer cover crop. By growing a drought tolerant, summer cover crop you can productively fallow land during the dry months to conserve water. A summer cover crop will provide a large addition of soil organic matter which will increase the water retention in your soil during future growing seasons. Cover crops also add nutrition to the soil and decrease weed pressure.
There are a number of great summer cover crops to try. Sudangrass (Sorghum bicolor) is a great choice for the foothills during the heat of summer. It requires an initial watering at planting but can be dry farmed once established. Take caution before grazing ruminants on sudangrass as it contains highly toxic prussic acid (hydrocyanic acid.) Sudangrass has lower concentrations of prussic acid than its relative Sorghum or Sorghum-Sudangrass hybrids but it is still present in the leaves and roots of the plant. Hogs and chickens are less susceptible to prussic acid poisoning.
Another great choice for a summer cover crop is buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum.) Buckwheat will also grow in very dry conditions once established. It creates wonderful forage for bees and beneficial insects, is very fast growing, and helps make phosphorous more available in your soils (http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/covercrop/res/1994-1996/other/mini-review). Buckwheat's broad leaves and fast growth make it an ideal “smother crop” that will effectively shade out problematic weeds.
Cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata) is a good legume choice for the dry summer. They will add a lot of nitrogen to your soils and will also help suppress summer weeds. Both buckwheat and cowpeas can be used as forage crops as well.
Grow a bed of summer cover crop or grow an entire field. Try a mix of species or just one type of plant. Whichever choice you make, summer cover crops will help you farm productively under the constraints of drought.
For more information on summer cover crops, check out these resources:
- Author: Dan Macon
Mark Twain may not have said, “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over,” but this quote certainly captures the essence of water policy in the West. Late last week, the State Water Resources Control Board sent a letter to appropriative water rights holders in northern and central California “notifying all holders of post-1914 appropriative water rights within the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds of the need to immediately stop diverting under their post-1914 water rights,….” In other words, if your water right was filed after 1914, you're out of water for now. An appropriative water right allows for storing water or for the use of water on land that is not directly abutting a waterway.
What does this mean for those of us who farm and ranch in Placer and Nevada Counties? Clearly, if we have a post-1914 appropriative water right, we're out of luck for this year. Fortunately, most of us irrigate with water from the Nevada Irrigation District or Placer County Water Agency. In these cases, the agencies are the water rights holders (and in both cases, these agencies hold at least some “senior,” or pre-1914 rights). However, at least several ranchers in our community did receive the letter.
If you did receive a letter, pay special attention to this provision:
“Compliance Certification Required:
Curtailed post-1914 diverters are required to document receipt of this notice by completing an online Curtailment Certification Form (Form) within seven days. The Form confirms cessation of diversion under the specific post-1914 water right, and, if applicable, identifies the alternate water supply to be used in lieu of the curtailed water right. Completion of the Form and identification of alternate rights can avoid unnecessary enforcement proceedings.”
The State of California has only issued such an order one other time – during the 1976-77 drought. And while our current drought may not be quite as severe as 1976-77 (in terms of rainfall and snowpack), we have millions more people – and much greater demand on our water system – than we did 38 years ago. It's shaping up to be a long summer. Let's hope for an early – and wet! – autumn!
Click here to see a media advisory from the State Board: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/press_room/press_releases/2014/pr053014_sjcurtailment.pdf.
For more information, you can call the Curtailment Hotline at (916) 341-5342, contact the State Board by email at: SWRCB-Curtailment-Certification@waterboards.ca.gov, or review their drought year webpage at:
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/index.shtml
Keep up with the latest drought information at https://www.facebook.com/groups/farmerrancherdroughtforum/. This group is open to commercial farmers and ranchers, and folks who work with us.
- Author: Dan Macon
Back on November 21, 2013, we measured 1. 53 inches of rain at our home place near Auburn. While this wasn't the first storm of the fall, it did represent our germinating rain – that is, it was enough precipitation to get our annual grass and forb plants to germinate. Just 16 days later, we received another half-inch of precipitation in the form of snow. Following this brief storm, our weather turned cold – our morning low temperatures dipped below 20 degrees F for several days, and our high temperatures hovered in the high 30s and low 40s. The combination of cold weather (which dropped soil temperatures below 50 degrees F) and short day lengths put our newly sprouted forage into dormancy – ending our fall growing season. Little did we know that the snow we received on December 6-7 was the last precipitation we'd measure until January 29, 2014. The grass that grew between November 21 and December 7 was all the green forage we'd get until mid-February.
Last week, I received an update from the Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center (SFREC) in Browns Valley, California, regarding estimated forage (grass) production. As you may recall, the January 1 measurement at SFREC was just 52 pounds per acre of forage – about 10 percent of normal for that date. The big storm we experienced in early February (over 7 inches of rain in four days) helped tremendously, as did the smaller storms that came through in late February. As of March 3, SFREC measured 400 pounds of forage per acre (about 58 percent of normal). Based on data collected at SFREC since 1979-80, we now have as much forage as we would expect to see by December 1 in a normal winter – in other words, we are 3 months behind schedule when it comes to growing grass.
My experience with grazing our sheep near Hidden Falls Regional Park northwest of Auburn confirms this lack of production. Our ewes are currently giving birth – which means they are consuming nearly twice as much forage as they do when they are not pregnant or producing milk for lambs. We typically time our lambing season to coincide with the onset of rapid grass growth – we try to match our period of highest demand with the supply of highly nutritious and rapidly growing forage. Last fall when we turned our rams in with the ewes (ewes are pregnant for about 150 days), we expected normal weather and forage production. This spring, we're adjusting to much drier conditions. Since we currently have about as much green grass as we'd expect to see in December, this means that we're moving sheep much more frequently. Yesterday, I built a 3+ acre paddock using portable electric fencing. Normally, this much grass would last our ewes 3-4 days at this time of year. This year, we were able to keep the sheep in this paddock for about 36 hours. The drought means we are spending twice as much time moving sheep as we normally would in March. It also means that our pasture recovery periods (the time in which we let graze pastures rest before grazing again) are longer - 35-40 days rather than the 25-30 days we'd normally expect in mid-March.
Because of the short grass this spring, I'm growing increasingly worried about conditions next autumn. Our foothill rangelands are dominated by annual grass and forb (broadleaf) species. By definition, an annual plant must complete its lifecycle in one year – that is, it must germinate, grow, reproduce and die all within one growing season. In drier years, annual plants will often mature and reproduce earlier – and at a lower height – in order to ensure that they create seeds for the next growing season. I anticipate that we'll see our rangeland plants mature earlier this year – I'm already seeing foxtail barley and wild oats “heading out” (setting seeds) in early March – a good month earlier than normal.
So why am I worried about conditions next fall? In a "normal" year, we try to abide by the principle of "take half, leave half" on our unirrigated rangelands. This means that we try to leave at least 800 pounds of standing grass (the technical term is “residual dry matter”) at the end of the growing season (which usually happens in May). We leave this much "residual dry matter" for several reasons:
- It provides a micro-environment that encourages earlier germination once the fall rains commence by moderating temperature, retaining moisture and protecting new grass seedlings.
- It protects our soils by providing root structure and intercepting the energy of falling rain drops - in other words, it prevents erosion.
- It helps give more desirable plants a leg up on invasive weeds (generally). Invasive weeds tend to like disturbed or bare soils. Too much residual can also encourage invasives to take over a site, so we try to find a balance.
- Finally, saving this much dry grass gives us a stockpile of dry forage going into the fall months. Dry grasses are not terribly nutritious for our livestock (we generally need to provide some supplemental nutrition), but we time our production system to be able to graze our ewes on this dry feed when they have lower nutritional demands (that is, when they are not about to give birth or lactating).
Based on past experience, we may be lucky to grow 800-1000 pounds of grass on some of our rangelands this year, so taking half would leave us under this threshold going into next fall. If we graze too much this spring, we create the potential for erosion and weed infestation next year - and we'd have little or no fall feed for our ewes.
Many beef cattle producers in the foothills breed their cattle to deliver calves in the fall. This may seem counter-intuitive based on the above discussion (after all, these cows experience their greatest nutritional demand at a time when the quality of forage is at its low point for the year). However, many ranchers feel that they can take better advantage of the spring flush of forage growth if their calves are mature enough to gain weight from grazed forage. Fall calving operations have limited options for dealing with shortages of fall forage – they can purchase hay, lease additional grazing land, and/or sell cows.
As a sheep producer, I have more flexibility. This winter and spring we're grazing on land that has not been grazed for two years, which allows us to save our summer and fall grazing land. While we may graze the land we're currently grazing again next winter and spring, we're not relying on it for forage this coming fall. Consequently, we can make sure we leave enough residual dry matter to provide the benefits outlined above. We'll also continue to look for options to graze additional rangeland through the summer and fall months. Because our entire system (animals, fencing, livestock water, etc.) is portable we can move our animals to where the feed is (rather than buying additional feed and bringing it to the animals).
On Monday, March 24, UCCE Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor Roger Ingram is organizing a workshop in Auburn for livestock producers to help us work through these questions on our own operations. We'll get some hands-on experience in estimating forage supply and thinking through our fall forage scenario. Roger will also provide information regarding animal health and nutrition, and early weaning strategies. For more information, go to http://ucanr.edu/sites/placernevadasmallfarms/?calitem=234305&g=22527.
Drought planning, as I've written previously, is most effective if it's done while it's raining! While we've chosen to raise sheep for a number of reasons, the flexibility that sheep (and other small ruminants, like goats) provide for harvesting forage seems like a good decision during the current drought. We'll see what next fall brings us!
- Author: Dan Macon
This morning, I awoke to another depressingly beautiful January day - clear skies and an expected high temperature here in Auburn of close to 70 degrees. I say depressing, because we should be in the midst of our rainy season here - but since December 1, we've measured less than one inch of precipitation. And there doesn't look to be much moisture in our future, either - a long range forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, "below median precipitation (and above normal temperatures mentioned earlier) during the height of the climatological rainy season support a continuation and possible intensification of drought conditions across California." Earlier this week, AccuWeather predicted rain for the weekend of February 1. As I check their forecast this morning, they’ve backed off on this prediction. Even the television "meteorologists" have quit using words like "beautiful" to describe our weather pattern - which must mean this drought is getting serious.
As our drought has worsened, I’ve started watching the Ken Burns’ film The Dust Bowl. The narrative quotes extensively from the writing of Caroline Henderson, a farmer who lived in the Oklahoma panhandle. In her “Letters from the Dust Bowl” published in the Atlantic Monthly in the 1930s, she wrote, “Many a time I have found myself tired out from having tried, unconsciously and without success, to bring the distant rainclouds nearer to water our fields. I’m beginning to see how worse than useless is this exaggerated feeling of one’s own responsibility.” As I drove to work this morning, I found myself looking hopefully (and ultimately, uselessly) at the clouds drifting over the Sierra crest. Indeed, I find that most of my thoughts at present revolve around the weather. Driving though the foothills where I live and the Montezuma Hills (in the Sacramento Delta) where I work, the parched landscape is depressing and scary. I often mutter to myself about plans for dealing with the dryness. I lay awake at night worrying about what the future holds for our farm.
The pond at our home place is normally full in January. This year, it's in danger of drying up entirely.
I've written recently about the impacts the drought is having on our business (see www.flyingmule.blogspot.com). We're feeding more hay than we normally would at this time of year, and we're planning on reducing our flock of sheep by 25-30% by the end of this month. If it stays this dry, we’ll wean this year's lambs much earlier than normal, and we probably won't have enough grass to market any grass-fed lamb this year. The business impacts, then, are likely to be significant for us - we are in "hang on" mode.
As The Dust Bowl makes clear, drought also takes an emotional toll on farmers and ranchers. Samia and I have raised sheep for more than 20 years. For the last 9 years, we've been trying to increase the scale of operation to allow for some financial success. We've kept our best ewes and their daughters - building our flock to its current size. In this process, we've become attached to our animals and to the seasonal rhythms of working with them. On January 31, I will take 30 or so of these ewes to the Escalon Livestock Auction - and I'll admit that I'll probably get choked up a bit when I drive away. Those 30 ewes represent a great deal of hard work and sacrifice on my part and on the part of my family. If we're to stay in business and take care of our land, we absolutely have to sell them - but this rationalization won't make it any easier. Once again, Caroline Henderson writes more eloquently than I can about this feeling: “But of all our losses, the most distressing is the loss of our self-respect. How can we feel that our work has any dignity when the world places so little value on the products of our toil?” I don’t think she meant that prices were too low; rather, I think she was distressed by the fact that the earth wasn’t cooperating in her family’s efforts to grow a crop.
The drought, obviously, will strain our business financially - which has an emotional price as well. We are buying hay at a time of year that normally brings us enough grass to support our sheep. We'll have fewer lambs to sell this year, and we won't likely be able to supply our community with grass-fed lamb. Like Caroline Henderson, a good deal of my sense of self (and self-worth) is tied up in my work - I'm a shepherd. Selling animals, from an emotional perspective, feels like a failure to me. I know of cattle producers in other parts of the state that have sold out entirely - liquidating herds that took two and three generations of their family to build. I’m beginning to understand that the term “the Great Depression” referred to the nation’s emotional state as well as economic conditions.
In his book The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan describes the impacts of the Dust Bowl on farming and ranching families in the Great Plains. During the height of that drought, the federal government bought cattle, drove them into trenches, and shot them - reducing grazing pressure on parched rangelands to help hold the soil in place. I can't imagine the emotional price that those families paid. I find it frightening that this year is shaping up to be drier (at least here in California) than the worst of those Dust Bowl years. However, I also find it amazing (and hopeful) to read Egan's accounts of families who stuck it out during the Dust Bowl - who rebuilt their farms (and their lives) when the rains finally returned and the soil stopped blowing. I hope I'm just as stubborn and resilient.
The Foothill Farming website is building a drought information section – click here to go to that section of the website. We’ve also created a Facebook group – the Farmer-Rancher Drought Forum – as a place to share information, ask questions and post photographs of drought conditions. Finally, on January 29, the University of California’s Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center will be holding a Drought Mitigation Workshop for ranchers (click here for more information). I know we’ll get valuable information about how to deal with the drought from a business and resource management perspective. I also know that we’ll all feel better when we go home – just knowing that others are dealing with similar issues (including the emotional issues I’ve described) will help make the drought easier to bear.
Drought-impacted annual rangeland near Oakdale, CA. Photo credit: Holly George
- Author: Dan Macon
If you’ve been reading our “Farming in the Foothills” blog over the last year, you’ll know that commercial farming is inherently risky profession. My fellow farmer Molly Nakahara (of Dinner Bell Farm) did a great job of describing farming risk in her October 28 post, “Farming, the Original Risky Business.” We farmers and ranchers face numerous uncertainties – from the weather to the marketplace to the regulatory environment. Some of these risks are short-term – like the snow storm that cancelled last weekend’s farmers’ market in Auburn. Some are long-term – like the potential impacts of new federal food safety standards on direct-market growers. Some risks can be eliminated, while others can only be mitigated. Our success as farmers and ranchers, in large part, depends on our success in managing these risks.
As a sheep rancher, there are two weather-related risks that foremost in my mind at the moment – one short-term and one long-term. As we wrap up our fall lambing season, we are in the midst of our regular early December cold snap. While the first week of December usually brings some of the coldest temperatures of the year, this year’s cold snap is especially severe and protracted. Since December 4 in Auburn, our morning lows have been in the teens, and our daytime highs have been in the high thirties or very low forties. At McCormack Ranch in Rio Vista, where we are lambing, the temperatures haven’t been much warmer. The cold weather presents a number of challenges: lambs that aren’t getting enough mother’s milk can quickly succumb to hypothermia. Lactating ewes that aren’t getting enough drinking water won’t produce as much milk. The sheep have to consume more feed just to maintain body temperature (let alone produce milk), so their feed demand increases.
From a longer-term perspective, we appear to be in the midst of a protracted drought. While we had a bit of rain in September, this fall has been dryer than normal. We finally got a germinating rainfall in mid-November – just in time for the weather to turn cold and the grass to go dormant. As a grass-farmer, I depend on fall grass growth to get our sheep through the winter months – and this year we didn’t get much growth. As we look toward next year, I’m very concerned that we may not have enough irrigation water to carry us through the summer months. The Nevada Irrigation District (NID) recently reported that we just experienced the driest January-November period in the district’s history – just over 20 inches of precipitation fell in NID’s upper watershed in the past 11 months. Unless we catch up soon, we may be facing reduced water deliveries next summer.
Obviously, these challenges can make for depressing conversations with other farmers, but there are some strategies we can use to mitigate (rather than eliminate) these risks. The weather is beyond our control, but our response to these conditions is not. Here are a few of the things we’re doing to manage these risks:
Short-term – sub-freezing temperatures
- As soon as we saw the forecast for sub-freezing temperatures, we moved the ewes who had not lambed into more sheltered paddocks. Lambs and ewes can deal with cold temperatures as long as they can avoid windy and wet conditions. These paddocks also had plentiful forage, which ensured sufficient feed intake for lactation and body temperature maintenance.
- We wrapped all of the pipes on the ranch to reduce the possibility of breakage (and subsequent time-consuming repairs). We also placed extra troughs in each paddock that we could reach with a hose from the water truck – if the permanent troughs froze, we could at least fill the temporary troughs from the truck.
- We moved the ewes with older lambs into the hills and increased the amount of hay we were feeding – again, to maintain milk production.
Long-term – drought
- We usually plan on culling 10-15 percent of our older ewes and replacing them with ewe lambs. We’ve been expanding our flock over the last several years, which means we cull fewer ewes and keep more ewe lambs. This year, we’ll consider culling more deeply – perhaps 20-25 percent of our ewes will be sold once we’ve weaned their lambs. We’ll also only keep ewe lambs out of our best and most productive ewes. While this will reduce our sheep inventory in the short-term, it will improve the overall productivity of our flock (measured in terms of lambing rate and pounds of lamb raised per ewe) over the long-term. Drought, then, allows us to improve the genetics of our flock.
- We’ll once again limit the number of lambs that we’ll keep to finish on grass and market directly to customers. As in 2013, we’ll base our decision on the amount of high quality summer forage likely to be available to us.
- We’ll evaluate the potential to invest in more efficient irrigation technology, like pod sprinklers. If we can make our irrigation water go further, we can grow more forage.
- Finally, we’ll also look for opportunities to graze alternative forages. This year, we’ve grazed crop residues and green “weedy” forage at Amber Oaks Farm in Auburn. We’ve also grazed alfalfa stubble in Rio Vista. Grazing helps to manage pests (plants and insects) on these operations while providing our sheep with higher quality forage.
Even with a risk management plan, these are the types of things that keep farmers and ranchers awake at night. While rain and wind never fail to awaken me from deep sleep, they keep me awake all night if they come in the midst of lambing. That said, a systematic approach to considering risk and adjusting to real-world conditions is critical to a successful farming or ranching operation. Ultimately, risk is just one of the many reasons that Tom Cruise isn’t a farmer.