Cowboy Heaven Consulting, LLC
6116 Walker Road
Bozeman, MT 59715
406-587-9563
1-877-613-0404
info@cowboyhvn.com

I just got back from a trip to the Hi-Line country of north central MT. We’ve got a farm up there, in an admittedly hardscrabble neighborhood, that’s being seeded back into native grass under the Conservation Reserve Program (something I feel incredibly fortunate to have squeaked our farm into just as the county hit its CRP acreage limit). Agriculture has been a tough gig in that neighborhood for quite a while now; let’s see, I’d say since about 1982. In the last few years, though, things have been getting increasingly dire, and I’d say they’ve now reached critical.

I know, farmers are given to complaining, and a lot of people turn a deaf ear toward the chronic whining that seems to emanate from the agricultural sector. Also, farm woes don’t really make for riveting news. It’s hard to condense the effects of a persistent, devastating drought into a neat little sound bite or video clip, although any news teams that were in the area during the incredible windstorm of last Saturday and Sunday would have had some pretty good material to work with. Sustained gale-force winds of over 60 mph, with gusts over 80 mph, resulted in a dust storm that many residents are calling the worst they’ve ever seen. Highway 2 from west of Cut Bank east to Chester was closed, due to low visibility. According to some who were caught in it, there was no visibility. Tragically, at least a couple of people lost their lives in resulting traffic accidents, and a whole lot of folks suffered property damage ranging from destroyed grain bins to missing roofs. Harder to put a value on is the loss, or at least re-distribution, of millions of tons of valuable topsoil. Trees and fences downwind of open fields are now sporting dunes of blowdirt that used to be at least marginally productive topsoil. People like to assign some point of reference, and the common one for the drought situation has been "it’s getting to be like the dust bowl around here", or some variation thereof. After this last weather event, though, I noticed nobody’s really saying it’s "like" much of anything else. It isn’t "like" the dust bowl, hell, it’s worse than the dust bowl days of the thirties!

The weather station at Cut Bank is reporting a meager .85" of precipitation since last fall. That’s the worst in the state, the worst on record (dating back to 1908), and a mere 30% of normal. What’s worse, is that no one expects the situation to let up anytime soon. Yet another El Nino situation is developing, which makes drought not only this summer, but through next winter and summer, a near-certainty. Discouraging? Hah! That’s an understatement….

Like I said, it’s been tough for quite a while already, but what sustains most farmers is the hope that "maybe next year’ll be a good one". Particularly in the 1970’s, and periodically prior to that, just often enough to make it a realistic possibility, farmers would get a year where favorable weather and decent prices would combine for a windfall profit. That more than made up for the lean years in-between, and not a few families were able to sock away some serious savings or at least pay off a lot of debt in those good years. Anymore, though, there just aren’t any good years. We’re four years into a crushing drought, with prospects for at least a couple more. If that wasn’t enough, the other factor in the farm profitability equation, commodity prices, have been in the tank for years also.

Back in the depression, dust-bowl days of the thirties, sure, things were tough, but it was possible if not comfortable to eke out a living on very little money. As everybody knows, living expenses have skyrocketed since then, not to mention input costs like machinery, herbicides, and fertilizer. With tractors and combines going for $100,000 or more, and wheat prices where they were after the civil war, the equation isn’t just unbalanced, it’s fallen right off the doggone balance beam!

Back in our semi-nomadic days, when we ran a seasonal business during the winters in Bozeman, and spent summers farming near Cut Bank, during the annual spring trips north you’d see a bustle of activity with farmers getting equipment ready for planting. By now, mid-April, usually you’d see lots of tractors in the field. It was springtime, with all the promise of a new season. On this last trip, which covered a lot of the prime agricultural country of what used to be known as the "Golden Triangle", as well as good areas around Townsend and Helena, the tractors we saw moving could be counted on one hand of a careless butcher. We saw two, that’s right, two, tractors in the field. Hardly anyone even appeared to be getting ready to plant. I suppose most are waiting and hoping for moisture before they go out and start tilling their fields, but I suspect a lot of farmers are also having trouble summoning up the will to go out and sink fifty or a hundred grand into a crop, when a loss is all but certain. To everything there is a season, but I think a lot of farmers are having trouble viewing this as the time to sow. This is more like a season of despair….

That was driven home by nearly everyone I spoke with. Numerous friends are leaving the area, selling their places and moving on, and those that aren’t (yet) are giving it serious consideration. A while back I was speaking with a neighboring farmer. They’re big-time operators, with an annual operating budget that probably runs the better part of a million dollars, as well as owning an implement dealership. His assessment of the situation was that it is "demoralizing". You’d probably have to know the people to get the full effect of that statement. They are rich, intelligent, driven people, and tend to regard themselves somewhat highly. It is not in their character to put a negative spin on anything ag-related, and for them to admit to being demoralized is a striking assessment of just how bad things have gotten.

Aside from the farmers, business owners in small towns up and down the Hi-Line are staring over the precipice also. The ones I spoke with were grim, if not downright desperate. Most alarming, is that most people seem to have given up hope of things improving. These are not easily discouraged people, but their supplies of optimism are used up, and many seem resigned to the fact that their way of life is ending. Unless some dramatic changes occur, which I see no reason whatsoever to expect, an awful lot of farms and businesses in eastern Montana are going to cease to exist over the next few years.

It may rightfully be asked "why should anyone care?" I’m not sure I have a good answer.

On our way up there, we went past a couple of anti-ballistic missile silos, relics of the cold-war era. I was giving my son and his buddy a little history lesson on the US-Soviet arms race of the 60’s and early 70’s, and something I had been dimly aware of at the time and recently saw mentioned in an article came to mind. That area of north central MT was definitely a bulls-eye for Russian missiles, and it’s obvious that the US Government had come to the conclusion that it was an expendable region. Somehow I find that more disturbing now than I did when I was growing up there. Living in that area has always required a certain degree of denial….

It’s looking like a whole lot of people, ranging from homestead-era promoters to would-be agricultural tycoons who thought the glory days of the 70’s would last forever are being proved wrong about the agricultural potential of a region that not a few early-day explorers thought would never be inhabited to any degree. The world obviously doesn’t value or even need wheat or beef produced in this harsh region, but I feel we are witnessing a reversion back to what I view as a far more valuable and unique situation. The area along the Rocky Mountain Front has been referred to as the "American Serengeti" for its diverse wildlife and striking topography. Those who originally proposed the "Big Open" idea, where much of eastern Montana would revert to a largely wildlife, bison, and tourism based economy (greeted with derision from nearly all quarters), are in all likelihood going to be proved right. The Hi-Line definitely isn’t Iowa, and Mother Nature, not to mention the world economy, is sending a clear message that we had better start emphasizing what we have a comparative advantage in. That’s going to be painful for a lot of people, no doubt.

My son has been fishing a couple of times, and has done really well. He and companions were fishing on smaller streams in the Gallatin Valley; the East Gallatin for one. There’s a narrow window between when the daytime highs start getting up into the balmy range, and when the low-elevation runoff starts, that can be superb fishing. Just yesterday I noticed that the East Gallatin is already getting kind of high and murky, though, so it appears that for the moment at least that window is already closing. Unfortunately, in the broader scale of things at least, low-elevation runoff is likely to be minimal and very short-lived. The ground is remarkably dry, and most snowmelt is soaking in instead of running off and adding to the depleted water levels in our reservoirs. The worst I’ve heard of is Fresno Reservoir near Havre, which is currently at an astounding 7% of its normal water level for this time of year. Yikes….!!

A couple of personal observations; I recently started watering the trees in our yard. Normally, if I put a hose on a tree, at a fairly low rate (just estimating, perhaps a gallon every five minutes) the water will start to run off in an hour and a half or so. This time, I left the hose running for around 6 hours per tree, and never did get any runoff. Also, an acquaintance near Cut Bank dug an eight foot deep hole with a backhoe, and found no moisture whatsoever. Not good….

So, from an outdoor recreation standpoint, if you’re planning a fishing trip I wouldn’t wait until late summer. Barring heavy rains in the next couple of months, streamflows are certain to be critically low by late July and August.

Personally, I just can’t get all that excited about fishing right now. I have never found flyfishing to be a particularly aerobic activity, and am currently more interested in getting back into shape from too much time spent behind a desk during the winter. So, to that end I’ve been doing a fair bit of hiking, under the guise of looking for shed elk antlers. Finally found a fair number, too…. Went on an overnighter this past week, my first backpack trip of the year. The southern Madison Range is about as specific as I care to be as far as locale…. Put in a half-day of work on Monday, took off about noon and returned Tuesday evening, covering 22 miles in the process (16 of it on Tuesday). The weather wasn’t particularly nice, not to complain (see preceding paragraphs about drought), but it was a most interesting outing anyway. Saw just a ton of elk, quite a few deer, and wasn’t upset with a lack of bear sightings. Fish, Wildlife, and Parks biologists report that the grizzly bears are coming out of their dens. A recent news release from FWP indicates of fifteen radio-collared grizzlies in Region 3 (Southwest Montana), as of last week four were active, six were active but still hanging around their dens, and five hadn’t emerged yet. Due to a good crop of whitebark pine cones last summer, biologists expect grizzlies to emerge in good shape this spring. Black bears tend to live at lower elevations where their food sources suffered more from the drought. Federal bear researchers who have checked a number of denned black bears in the Yellowstone area report them to be in poor condition. In either case, freshly emerged bears are big-time hungry, and FWP is urging anyone poking around in the backcountry to exercise caution, particularly in the vicinity of any winter-killed big game animals. On my hike, I came across a dead elk, but it was a calf and already pretty well consumed. Mountain lion, most likely….

I didn’t see any bears, or even any tracks, and can’t say I feel too gypped, either. I carried pepper spray, though, just in case. I wasn’t in the Boy Scouts, but I think their motto makes sense….