I will echo what others have said about the drought conditions in much of SW Kansas. I have been working around the area. Garden City has a lot of poor wheat. Sublette and Liberal has fields that never came up last fall, so no amount of rain will save them. I have seen more birds than usual on the roads and in the ditches than usual. Maybe it is because there is no where else. There are waste areas and CRP fields that may produce some hatches, but I think overall nesting success is going to be way off in the severe drought area.
Here at Dodge the wheat is better, although there have been some total wipeout hail storms. My pasture is still dormant, no having the benefit of spring rains for green up. Fortunately, I am down on cow numbers, and there is some carryover grass for them to graze. I have two small pieces of CRP in the pasture perimeter that I can graze under the emergency grazing order. I am hoping I can buy some time and not have to do that, especially since that is a lesser prairie chicken area. I only have four bales of hay left, so the other option is buy hay and starting haying them.
We had a terrible grasshopper problem last year and I was hoping not to have it this year, but this weekend I noticed there is a substantial hatch of tiny grasshoppers. They are back!
Like my dad used to say, "If it is not the hogs, it is the windmill." meaning something was always going wrong at the farm. Still the only life for me.
