PTDS

During the fall of 2013, I went to work part-time for a large-scale sheep outfit in Rio Vista, California. We’d had a germinating rain in late September, but the grass got a false start - we didn’t have any more rain until November, as I recall. After Thanksgiving, we had a cold snap in Rio Vista (I woke up one morning in my trailer without hot water or a working furnace) and a bit of snow in Auburn. And then it quit raining until late January. We fed most of our year’s supply of alfalfa hay to the sheep while they were lambing in October and November.

When I took the job, I was able to bring my own 200 +/- ewes to Rio Vista as well. Even with the rain we finally received in January 2014, feed was scarce - and so I decided that we needed to sell some of our sheep to conserve grass for the operation’s ewes. Sorting through our sheep - and deciding which ones were going to go to the auction in Escalon - was probably the most difficult agricultural decision I’ve ever had to make. And as the drought persisted, I came to a mutual agreement with the ranch I was working for. They’d had to sell sheep, too - and we all decided that they couldn’t afford to keep me employed. In mid-February 2014, I hauled our remaining flock back to Placer County - just before we started lambing. From that point forward, our sheep operation remained a part-time enterprise. And I began to work full time for the University of California.

By the following winter, I was working as the herdsman at the UC Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center in Browns Valley. We still had our sheep, but the drought persisted. That winter, I spent much of my time moving cattle around the research ranch, chasing grass. That summer, I hauled water to the cows so that we could utilize forage in pastures that had feed but lacked stock water.

These experiences stayed with me - much of my master’s degree research focused on how California ranchers responded to our 1000-year drought. As a cooperative extension advisor since 2017, much of my program has focused on helping ranchers prepare for, respond to, and recover from drought. But this winter, I’ve confirmed that I have a condition called “Post-traumatic Drought Syndrome,” or PTDS.

The symptoms of PTDS include anxiety during extended winter dry periods. As I write this, we haven’t had any precipitation in Mountain Ranch in more than three weeks. While I know we often get dry spells like this during the winter months, the lack of rain in our 2-week forecast makes me increasingly nervous. This week, I drove to Reno and confirmed that we don’t have much snowpack in the high country, either.

I remember reading about some research from Australia during our big drought that reported Aussie farmers often kept multiple weather apps on their phones. During dry stretches, they’d check each app until they found one with a more favorable forecast. I find that I do the same thing. At the moment, all of my apps don’t show any moisture for the next 10 days. On day 11, they show a chance of rain, but that chance is always at least 11 days out.

Currently, I only have four sheep - two breeding ewes and two lambs that I’ll harvest next week. I am planning to purchase a handful of feeder lambs and goats (probably a total of 20) in March to help manage the fire danger on my property. PTDS - and the potential for summer/fall wildfire - has changed the way I look at raising sheep. For the foreseeable future, I’ll buy feeder animals in the spring, and sell them when I run out of grass. I won’t keep many sheep year-round.

I know we’ll get more rain, and I know the grass will grow. I also know that I no longer rely on these things for even a portion of my livelihood. But having managed through the Big Dry of 2012-2016, I find that I’m feel the mental and physical manifestations of anxiety. I still suffer from PTDS.

What's this Weather Gonna Do?!

For the 13th time in February 2020, I awoke this morning and checked several weather apps on my phone. And as in the 12 days previous to this morning, I found myself disappointed and worried about the lack of precipitation in our forecast. We're nearly halfway through what is typically one of our wetter months in the Sierra foothills, and we have yet to measure any rain. Being obsessed with weather records, I've looked back at my data from previous Februaries here in Auburn and found that 10 times since 2002, we've received less than average rain during the month (including a measly 0.55 inches in 2013, during the depth of our 1000-year drought). But we've never received nothing.

Social media, I suppose, is the modern rancher's coffee shop or general store. Facebook and Twitter seem to be the places that we share news, compare ranching conditions, and commiserate with one another. Earlier this week, a reporter from the Sacramento Bee tweeted this:

To which I replied, "Even without your permission, I started getting nervous in October. Precip is short; grass is shorter."

This morning, I tweeted this:

This generated quite a bit of discussion about anxiety and memories of the last drought. Chris Sayers, a farming friend who I only know through the wonders of social media, responded:

"The psychological let down after Nov-Dec rainfall has been acute for me. Warm, dry, windy weather is as tough on my mental state as it is on the trees."

Later, I took a call from another friend who ranches here in the foothills. He confided that he was worried, though pleasantly surprised by the amount of grass and soil moisture at one of the ranches he leases. He admitted, however, that he would be weaning his bull calves early of we hadn't received any significant rain by the end of the month.

Having raised sheep and managed cattle through the 2012-2015 drought, I feel like I am better equipped to deal with the return of dry conditions this time around, at least from a management perspective. I've already gone through the pain of selling off sheep. My sheep partner Roger Ingram and I keep careful track of forage conditions. When we started getting worried about forage quantity last fall, we took advantage of some alfalfa stubble that our friend Nathan Medlar had contracted to graze. We talk regularly about whether we need to sell sheep to reduce our forage demand or save feed for next fall. We have the portable fencing systems and stock water equipment necessary to move our sheep to where there is forage.

But I also realized during the virtual coffee shop conversations I had on Facebook and Twitter today that I'm tired. The anxiety of dealing with one weather-related crises after another (from wildfire to public safety power shutoffs to impending drought) is exhausting. I'm not sure I know what a normal year is, exactly, but I'd sure like to experience two or three of them in a row! In some ways, I guess, our advanced technology and forecasting abilities can heighten my anxiety - without my smartphone, I probably wouldn't know that we aren't likely to get any rain for the next two weeks!

In the meantime, I joke that the rain will return on the day we start to lamb (around February 22 this year). Dark humor, I suspect, has always been part of the coping mechanism for folks whose livelihoods are tied directly to Mother Nature's whims. I still hold out hope that we'll have another "Miracle March" - or even a wet April and May like 2019 (when we received more than 7 inches of rain). There's no telling what this weather is gonna do....