Sunday, July 9, 2000
Conservation crucial to survive
droughts
By Jerry Daniel Reed
Reporter-News Staff Writer
Almost two generations have passed since
Abilene and its neighbors made it through their longest and severest
drought.
Everyday life has changed radically since
those days, but one thing hasn’t. Coping with material shortages
has always been about making do with what you have: conserving.
In the ’50s, most of the adults had
fresh memories of the Great Depression of the 1930s, which required
dealing with far more material deprivations than just water.
“I think they knew how to handle hard
times,’’ said Wastella farmer Cliff Etheridge, who was
a teen-ager in the ’50s.
Area legislators Bob Turner of Voss and
David Counts of Knox City recall what it was like to stand in
line for the bath. Not just the same tub, the same bathwater.
And then, the well-recycled bathwater was put to use one last
time, watering the tomato plants, Turner recollects.
Johnny Heatly, chief executive of the Jones
County Farm Service Agency, recalls baling Johnson grass from
a railroad right-of-way bordering the Heatly place near Trent,
and burning the fine, hairlike, painfully sharp thorns from prickly
pear cactus to make up for the hay and grains the drought prevented
the farm from growing.
Finding a job in town, then working late
hours in the fields, was a common strategy for making up for cash
income lost to the drought. Rule farmer Pete Kittley learned the
carpenter trade to help support his family. And he put headlights
on his tractors.
As a young teen-ager, Heatly found the novelty
of driving a tractor loads of fun — until his dad found a
town job and sent the son to the fields for long hours in the
tractor seat.
“After that,’’ said Heatly,
“it got to be a job!’’
Big, silver-colored water tanks were a common
sight in the depths of the ’50s drought, as people whose
water ran out bought from suppliers who had a little extra to
sell.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture operated
an emergency livestock feeding program in which farmers in states
such as Michigan shipped surplus hay south, where a drought-stricken
livestock raiser could acquire it for a nominal cost.
The livestock feeding program has since
been switched to cash aid, allowing the farmer to buy feed on
the open market, Heatly explained.
In the ’50s, country folks were more
self-sufficient than they are today, so the lack of cash income
was not the problem it is today.
“We raised a little stock,’’
said Counts, whose father drove a bread truck for a living. “We
had chickens to eat, a milk cow or two all the time, beef cattle,
and a few ol’ hogs.’’
Heatly’s mother would look for the
prettiest sack design when she bought flour, and he’d soon
have a new shirt, he said.
Fast forward to the drought that started
in the late ’90s and you find a world of difference.
Crop insurance, which existed in the ’50s
but was virtually unknown in these parts, is now widespread, Heatley
noted.
Farm wives are as likely as their urban
sisters to hold an outside job to provide a cash cushion in times
of poor crops or low prices.
Still, conservation pays off, and in some
ways the farmers and city dwellers of today can conserve water
in ways their parents and grandparents never knew.
Modern irrigation equipment gives the farmer
much greater bang for the buck, or the gallon, than was possible
in bygone eras.
Plant roots instead of the entire surface
of the ground get the lion’s share of the precious and limited
liquid.
Inside the city limits, the conscientious
homeowner can take advantage of much of the same equipment and
knowledge that enhances irrigation efficiency on the farm. Landscape
plants and garden vegetables thrive on soaker hoses and drip irrigation
even in such a year as this.
Fred Perkins, the driving force behind the
Big Country Master Gardeners organization, showed how to keep
a 6,000-square-foot vegetable patch going on city water even before
a spell of above-average rainfall that came in the last few days
of May.
“Most of the gardeners I’ve talked
to, they’ve cut back quite a bit, but I didn’t know
any better,’’ joked the 74-year-old Perkins. “I
just planted what I always do, and prayed.’’
Even Perkins can’t beat every weather
problem thrown his way, so his tomatoes failed to set fruit in
a May that behaved more like early July.
But then along came a June that acted more
like a typical May, and small green tomatoes started popping out
all over Perkins’ 84 vines.
Other cultural practices, such as mulching
with a half-foot of wheat straw to cool the soil and conserve
moisture, also help Perkins maintain his garden mastery even in
unfavorable years.
It’s just a matter of making do with
what’s available.
Contact staff writer Jerry Reed at 676-6769
or reedj@abinews.com.
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Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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