Flash Drought

Last October, thanks to the most intense rainfall I've ever experienced in the Sierra foothills, we measured more than 10 inches of precipitation - more than enough to get the grass on our annual rangelands started. While we got just half of our "normal" November rainfall, December turned wet once again, with another 12 inches arriving mostly as rain. But after January 8, the spigot shut off - and it's been shut off ever since. With temperatures in the high 60s and no rain in the 14-day forecast, we find ourselves again (or maybe still?) in the midst of drought.

Some will know that we take grazing planning pretty seriously in our little sheep operation. We have a pretty good idea how many "sheep-days" an acre of our winter pasture will support, which allows us to estimate how many days of grazing we'll need to get through key parts of our production year. And one of the most critical parts of our year is quickly approaching - lambing season!

Obviously, lambing season is important to our bottom line. While we do sell some wool (hopefully) and do some summer targeted grazing, the bulk of our income comes from selling each year's crop of lambs. But lambing season is critical ecologically, too - we have chosen to lamb in late February through early April because that's when the forage on our annual rangelands is typically growing the most quickly. Lots of hungry ewes (who will consume as much as 50 percent more forage when they're nursing lambs) means we need lots of high quality forage for them to graze.

But with the dry and warm conditions, our oaks and brush species are showing signs of coming out of dormancy - which means they are drawing more water from the soil. If we don't get any rain by the first of March, we'll likely be through with the pastures we've planned to graze by the third week of March. In other words, in six weeks, we could be out of feed. As per our grazing plan, we were expecting to stay at this location through mid-April, when we'll move the sheep home for shearing and then on to irrigated pasture.

Drought is always part of our planning process, and so we're not totally unprepared for this possibility. Over the next 6-8 weeks, we'll begin implementing several strategies for extending our forage supply - strategies, that don't (for now) involve buying hay.

1. We'll grab any extra days of forage we can find. This means grazing close to roadsides in the community where our sheep are running. It means means extra labor to fence steep hillsides that have grass but that are difficult to access. It means we might be moving the ewes and lambs further (which also takes more time). This Saturday, we'll take stock of these additional grazing opportunities - I'm hoping we'll add another 10-14 days of forage to our plan.
2. We'll price some hay and think about where it would be most convenient to feed it - in addition to the purchase price of extra feed, we need to think about the labor and other expenses involved in hauling, storing, and feeding hay. This is usually a last resort for us, but since we've invested a full year's worth of expenses in getting the ewes to this point, we will consider buying feed.
3. We'll consider doing some paid grazing jobs in early April if they are convenient to our home place where we shear - if we can walk the sheep rather than loading them in the trailer for multiple trips, this might be an uption.
4. If we haven't had an inch of rain by April 1, and if there's no rain in the 14-day forecast at that point, we'll sell any ewe that hasn't yet lambed.
5. If all else fails, I'll try washing my truck.

I attended (virtually) a symposium on drought tools put on by the Society for Range Management yesterday. One of the rancher's involved said of his drought plan, "We follow it. It's written down, which makes me accountable to it." We try to do the same. We've tried to stock our operation conservatively (that is, we've tried to keep the number of sheep we think we can graze without much purchased feed on the land we have available to us). We've invested in skills and technology (stockmanship and electric fencing) that allow us to mostly take our sheep to the forage (instead of hauling hay to the sheep). We've timed our highest forage demand with the time of year that usually gives us the greatest forage supply. But sometimes the conditions are worse than our expectations - sometimes we need reactive strategies, too. I'm increasingly convinced that this may be one of those years.

Another Weird One... Or No Drought is the Same

Several weeks ago, I received updated forage measurements from the University of California's Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center (SFREC) in Browns Valley - about 40 miles north of our home place here in Auburn. For those of you who aren't rangeland geeks like I am, forage production on annual rangeland is measured in pounds of forage (grass and broadleaf plants) per acre. SFREC has clipped and measured forage for the last 40 years, so these monthly numbers give us a pretty good idea on where we stand compared to a "normal" year. And if you've read my blog posts over the last six months, you'll probably be surprised to learn that we were well ahead of "normal" on April 1 - I know I was surprised! On April 1, SFREC measured 2,570 pounds of forage per acre - a whopping 157% of average for the date. How is that possible? After all, we've only received about 70% of our normal precipitation through today! But these numbers, obviously, don't tell the entire story.

As you'll recall, February 2020 was the driest on record here in the Sierra foothills - we measured just 0.03 inches for the month here at home. February was also warmer than normal; the blue oaks were entirely leafed out by the fourth week of the month - at least three weeks earlier than I can ever remember. But in January, we had decent moisture, and March was close to normal. Based on my current observations of the condition of the annual plants on our rangelands, they've nearly completed their growing season (and remember, an annual plant must complete its entire life cycle - germinate, grow, reproduce, and die - all in the space of a year). Many of our annual grasses have already headed out - forage that usually keeps growing through May looks like it may be done for the year. In other words, we might be ahead of "normal" as of April 1, but our forage might be done growing. This might be all we get this year. It's enough for spring; will it be enough to hold us through fall - especially of fall is dry like 2019?

We've now moved back to our irrigated pastures closer to Auburn. Last week, the Nevada Irrigation District (NID) began delivering water to the ranch - and we started irrigating. Even with more than 3 inches of rain in early April, we've discovered that our pasture soils are dry. We irrigate for 24 hours in one location before moving to the next "set" - and we don't come back to that set for 12-14 days (what we call our "rotation"). Based on soil conditions, we should have started water on April 1 - too bad NID doesn't deliver summer water until April 15! This lack of soil moisture was evident this spring on our annual rangeland, too - the seasonal creeks really never ran at all. And since the oaks came out of winter dormancy early, they started pulling water out of the soil early, too - in late February, the vegetation under the oaks was beginning to wither.

Since the Big Dry of 2012-2015, every dry period during our normal rainy season makes me nervous. We feel like we've balanced our sheep numbers with our forage resources, but we're always looking ahead at least six months to be sure that demand (the number of sheep mouths we have to feed) is balanced with supply (the amount of grass available). A study highlighted in the San Francisco Chronicle late last week suggests that we may be on the cusp of a mega-drought - a multi-decade (or event centuries-long) dry spell. I'm not sure I know how to manage for that kind of drought!

In the meantime, I'm happy to have irrigation water this spring and summer. I'm happy to have enough grass to get us through the summer - and hopefully next fall. And I'm happy that, at least for now, we have more grass than "normal."

Anxious Days

My family will probably tell you - this weather makes me grumpy. What may seem like "nice" weather to most (75F during the day, low to mid 40s at night, and not a drop of rain) makes me nervous in November. And so I'm grumpy - and anxious.

I start each day by looking at the weather app on my phone. Since the third week of October, the 10-day forecast has been largely the same when it comes to precipitation. No rain forecast for 8 or 9 days; a 10% chance of rain on day 10 - seems like rain is always just over the horizon. I suspect the forecast models have to put rain in the 10-day forecast because it's SUPPOSED to be raining now. But it isn't. I made the mistake today of looking at the 3-month precipitation outlook from the National Weather Service - we have a 40% chance of being drying than normal through the end of January. Not good news.

We typically manage our grazing with an nod toward the possibility of drought - we try to save dry forage for the late autumn months, knowing we may not get much grass growth before the short, cold days of winter send our annual grasses into dormancy. We try to keep our sheep numbers in balance with our feed availability. This year is no different; we'll ship the sheep back to winter pasture in about 10 days - and we've got 60 days of dry forage saved for them. But this year, 60 days might not be enough.

In a "normal" year (whatever that is), these hillsides would be green by Thanksgiving.
They won't be this year, I'm afraid.

We're quickly approaching the point where rain won't help us in the short term, and even in the mid-term. Even in an unusually warm fall/winter, we'll reach a point around the winter solstice when the days are too short - and the soil temperature too cold - to grow any grass. And since the early germinated grass I bragged about in September has mostly died, we'll need another germinating rain to get the grass growing again. Unless we get rain in the next 2-3 weeks, we'll have to wait until 2020 to see much green. And even if it rains by Thanksgiving, we'll have to wait 60-75 days before this new grass is tall enough to fill our sheep.

As I've written during other dry autumns, we time our production system to take advantage of the grass that Mother Nature usually grows. We have the rams in with the ewes now - breeding season will last until November 16. The early gestation ewes have fairly low nutritional requirements - our dry forage will mostly satisfy their demands. But as they approach late gestation (in January) and then lactation (beginning in late February), they'll need the highest quality feed we can provide - lots of green grass! If we're below average in precipitation over the next three months, lambing season could be difficult. Our options are to sell sheep or buy hay - and neither one makes me happy.

I've done this long enough to know that my worrying won't make it rain. No matter how many different weather apps I consult during the course of the day, the models don't lie. We don't have any rain in our short-term future; we may not have much rain in our longer-term future. While the objective part of my brain understands this, the emotional part of my brain is grumpy. I wish it would rain.