A Promising Year Turns Into a Drought Disaster
What started out as a favorable year, with the anticipation of El Niño, quickly turned into a disaster. Here is an album of pictures from our ranch this summer. Our property is all contiguous, so some areas might have caught an afternoon shower. However, for the majority of our property, May 25 to October 25 passed without measurable rainfall.
A Legacy of Resilience
First off, we're 5th generation pecan growers. This place has seen droughts like this before, as well as floods to end them. Some of our trees in the orchard were planted in the 1880s. My great-great-grandfather's family hand-watered them with a bucket from the river. The native trees growing along the river are well over 300 years old, dating back to when Native Americans were still here.
Irrigation Systems: A Struggle for Water
Our irrigation systems, installed after the drought of the 1950s, are only supplemental at best. In Central Texas, our average rainfall is about 30 inches per year, but we are currently at just 1/3 of that. We have drilled water wells in the past, but the water level soon dropped and the well didn't produce enough. 
The Impact on Pecan Growth
As pecan growers, we grow two crops—the leaves and the pecan nuts themselves. This summer, the leaves were approximately half the size of a normal year’s crop. That, in turn, limited the number of pecans in the clusters. Most years, we have 3–5 pecans in a cluster, but this season, we saw only 1–2. However, the limited number of nuts has led to better quality, as more resources were devoted to each one.
Limb Dieback and Tree Damage
We also noticed pecan trees with “Limb Dieback,” similar to what we saw in 2011. When a tree loses half its diameter, its volume is reduced to 1/8, causing significant loss. We lost years of production in just one summer. Of our 11,000 trees, the easiest to remove are the totally dead ones. The difficult decisions involve the half-dead trees that need rehabilitation.
Breaking Branches and Future Concerns
During the dry summer, the trees' scaffolding limbs would break. Normally, these limbs are semi-flexible with water under the bark, but the lack of moisture caused even large limbs, some as big as a man’s torso, to snap. If these wounds don’t heal correctly, it leads to insects, like wood borers, burrowing into the trunk. Water damage is also a concern when it rains, as it can rot the tree from the inside out, making future harvesting dangerous.
Irrigation Efforts: Fighting for the Trees
Most of our summer was spent irrigating the pecans, more to keep the trees alive than to save the crop. It felt like losing the battle to win the war. We are playing the long game, which included moving pumps, fixing wells, and installing new irrigation lines.
Assessing the Damage
As far as tree damage, it's hard to make a total assessment right now. We had a frost soon after the rain fell in late October, so the trees are headed into dormancy. We will know more about the total damage in early April.
Cattle Survival During the Drought
The cattle managed to survive this summer, though we supplemented them with hay until the grass ran out in the early fall. We sold half of our herd due to the extreme drought. Cows even ate prickly pears, thorns and all, to sustain themselves. Some of our properties ran out of water as tanks dried up, but the areas along the river provided some relief, although even the San Saba and Colorado Rivers went dry, leading to our cows mingling with neighboring herds.
Struggling Hay and Wheat Crops
Our hay crops were about 25% of what they should have been. Hay grazer planted in June failed to produce—a first for us. The wheat crop was also a bust for harvesting grain, so it was turned into hay for the cattle this winter. Bermuda grass, which usually yields 3–4 cuttings annually, only yielded one this year.
Hope for the Future
We hope that the current drought is over and that normal rain patterns return soon. The tough part about droughts is their unpredictability. Unlike floods, they are a slow and steady killer of the environment and can persist even after rain showers arrive. 
Faith in Hardship
In San Saba County, we had a prayer meeting with several churches. Soon after, rain came. My dad has had this written on a dry erase board in our farm office since 2011:
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will be joyful in God, my Savior.”
Habakkuk 3:17-18 (NIV)
Enduring With Perseverance and Hope
In times of hardship, I also like to remember Romans 5:
“We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
Romans 5:3-5 (NIV)
A Reminder of Our Stewardship
We often take for granted the fact that we have 12 inches of topsoil and regular rain. I take comfort in knowing that I am just a steward of the resources God has entrusted to me. Someone else planted these trees and cared for them for the first 100 years. Now, it's my turn to do my part and make things better for the next generation.
