Too Soon to Say the "D" Word?

This fall, increasingly, is giving me a sense of déjà vu. We had a wonderful germinating rain during the third week of September, followed by another nice storm at the end of the month. And since September 30, we've had just 0.02 inches of rain - and multiple days of north wind. The grass that started growing with the September rains has shriveled. Looking at the forecast, there's been a 10 percent chance of rain 10 days out for the last 4 daily forecasts. This fall (and this forecast) reminds me of the autumn of 2013 - we had 1.75 inches of rain in September, but just 0.15 inches in October. I was helping lamb out a large group of ewes in Rio Vista that October-November - we fed our entire year's supply of alfalfa by Christmas. I'm not quite ready to say we're back in drought, but things are awfully dry - and more than a little bit scary.

We rely on rain-"irrigated" rangeland to feed our sheep from about November 15 through early April. Usually, we get enough rain in October (and still have enough warm days) to have plenty of grass by the time the days are short and cold enough to halt grass growth until late February or early March. We time our production calendar to minimize forage demand during the late fall and early winter - but we still need enough grass to feed our pregnant ewes. With the dry weather we've had this month - and especially with the low humidity and north wind - we'll now need another germinating rain. And we're quickly approaching the time of year when the days will be too short - and the air and soil too cold - to support grass growth.

We have saved some dry forage for the fall, but one of the reasons we have access to fall and winter grass on our winter rangeland is that we try to reduce fire danger with summer grazing on this same landscape. This year, we summer grazed about 50 acres. This is rangeland that we won't be able to graze again until the grass takes off. And we try to save about 80 acres for lambing - the ewes need almost twice as much grass per head per day during lambing as they do this time of year (in other words, our stocking rate doubles while our ewe inventory remains the same). All of this means that without rain in the near future, we'll run out of forage some time in January.

As a rancher, I try to be a realistic optimist. I try to hope for the best but plan for the worst. In the coming days, we'll get out on our winter range and estimate the amount of forage we have available. We'll examine our sheep inventory and determine whether we have any sheep we'd be willing to sell to reduce our forage demand. And we'll continue to pray for rain. Rangeland-based operations like ours are usually the first to feel the effects of drought; we'll hope this is just a short-term challenge rather than a years-long dry spell, like 2013-2015. We'll hope we're not back in a drought.