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Prayers for those whose homes are in danger. BTDT.

The last two times we were out in Jackson to see our kids, there were forest fires of same size. Last summer's fires were allowed to burn themselves out as they went towards undeveloped areas rather than communities.

God Bless,

Scar.

central Flahduh just saw many thousands of acres burned, many lost everything

Can't imagine the feeling of total loss, but recently lost my hunt camp to an isolated wildfire...wasn't much but wow does it suck to to pull up to ashes and steel remnants instead of a comfortable shelter in the woods

This is a sad morning in the Texas Panhandle. Last night in the fires we lost two beautiful young people. We have lost Cody Crockett and Sydney Wallace. During the fires these two braved the flames to save cattle in McLean. I have tremendous respect for the ranching community and the traditions they pass to their future generations. Without them we wouldn't be a rich culture. We lost a part of that last night. While these two are gone here on earth they are now ranching and herding the cattle on a thousand hills for the greatest rancher and cattle baron of all. Stop for a moment and hug your kids. Say a prayer for the families of these two. The families will need it.

Did you say GRAPEFRUIT size hail? I never heard of such a thing. That will keep the roofers busy I imagine. Incredible.

The ROCK

But when he left his house Tuesday morning with a favored rifle, he was dreading the day. He felt even worse when it was over.

“It’s horrible, just horrible. I left the house with (60) shells and used them all,” Konrade said. He said he probably killed 40 cows, “and in a lot of places there weren’t even very many left alive to put down.”

"The fire began Monday morning northeast of Sterling, near the Logan County town of Crook, and pushed its way 23 miles across Interstate 76 into Phillips County. Volunteer firefighters and local farmers banded together to prevent the wind-whipped blaze from destroying Haxtun, a town of about 900 people."

Ford County reports seven homes were destroyed. The fire department monitored hotspots overnight to keep fire away from structures.

Reno County officials estimate 6,000 acres have burned in the county; 4,500 acres of that is from the Highlands Area subdivision grassfire. At least 30 homes are destroyed, with the possibility that more are damaged. Local officials have been unable to get into the area to assess damages due to the fire."

"And From the Ashes comes life. Ain't this a beautiful sight? Mama is a little burnt, but doing fine, as is baby." #kansasfires

“I had no choice but to turn around and drive away, with the fire all around me,” he said softly and slowly. “For a half-hour I didn’t know if my brother and his wife were dead or alive. I really didn’t.”

""The topsoil is all gone, and in a lot of places it has eroded down to the subsoil," he said."

I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it someday for a crown."

I saw several big loads of hay headed toward the fire today.

“I have lost everything.”

“Out of the 812 head of cows, they had to put down 725 of them.”

“Calves are burned up on one side, and just fine on the other.”

“I have already found 15 more animals to put down this morning. I am tired of killing.”

“As I was fighting the fire, I knew the direction it had turned to. My house, my property.”

“My family runs 6 generations deep on this land.”

“Only 6 steers and a few heifers were spared.”

The reality of the fires that hit Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado. Ranchers finally, finding time and energy to assess the damage that had been done. Within minutes and hours, ranches were scorched, livestock, pets, and wildlife had no where to go, and the dynamics of the ranching communities were forever changed.

But, within a matter of minutes and hours, communities, neighbors, friends, regions, areas, states, and even a nation began to come together; to unite. Drop off points in the Texas Panhandle are overflowing with mountains of bottles of water, and loads after loads of hay. Donations that were selflessly given, time and effort spent, humbly, to provide care for livestock and ranchers, alike.

“A drop of 80 squares bales of alfalfa just came.”

“If we get anymore bottles of water, we are going to be able to fill water trucks to water livestock!”

“Every bit of these donations are going to be used.”

“I have a semi and a load of hay, where do I need to take it?”

“Hi, I am from Vermont, and want to help! Where and what do people need the most?”

Thousands of people and dollars coming together to help to rebuild the foundation that America is built off of. A delicate culture that will need more cultivation, now, than ever before.

The ranching lifestyle is a more romantic profession. Not the love kind of romance. But more of, an ebb and flow of give and takes, life and death, good and bad days, the promise of tomorrow, but living in today because tomorrow is not always promised. It is the memories on the walls of the first homestead of a ranch, the whispers off of sorting pens that your great-great granddad built. It is the the first stand of a newborn calf, the bawl of a momma who has lost her baby, the creek of a saddle room door. The thought of “if these walls could talk”, the cultivation of the land so that it continues to provide for the animals that the Lord has chosen you to take care of. And, it is the moments of major destruction and devastation that the ranching lifestyle becomes the most romantic.

There is no day off to mourn, except for the ones who lost their lives during the fires, there is no day off to be down on the fact that land and livestock and lives were taken. No. These men and women, woke up, prepped their hearts and minds and set off to rescue the ones that made it through the blaze. The ones, surrounded by ash, that were able to make it through. They went on scavenging their property for animals, and save-able pieces of fencing, barns, maybe even a halter or two. Calves that were orphaned are now being bottle fed, cows without their calves are having to be milked to release the pressure off their bags. Horses are being doctored, wildlife is being fed off of people’s back porches. Life and death, the good and bad, come with tired eyes, giving hearts, and strong, calloused hands.

“This is a pretty harsh world we live in. And Mother Nature can sure be relentless more times than not. And that’s why I would say I’m drawn to our culture. Our lifestyle. No matter what this old world puts on us or tries to take from us we overcome it time and time again. This is proved throughout our history. From the livestock lost to lives of loved ones, before and in my time, that have been cut short. I know these times will come to pass and we will dust off and keep going. Never forgetting these times.”

The heritage that was lost during the fires will continue to live on through the men and women. The generation of cattle blood line that were taken, the thousands of acres of pastures that were consumed, the homesteads that had been on the property long before cars and cell phones, now just a past piece of history that stays in the minds of the ranchers, cowboys, and cowgirls. The rebuilding process will be long and hard, days of bad will intercept some of the days of good. But the hope and faith that has and will continue to be provided will give the strength to look forward to the days to come because…

Out of the ashes, we rise.

–Hope Sorrells

They fought the fire on the Tajchman front lawn, with the wind howling, battling flames that leaped high.

The firefighters involved later contacted Tajchman on Facebook and sent video.

“In a video he sent me, taken at the end of our driveway, you can hear , ‘Trying to save this house; I think it’s a goner.’

"she knows the name of one of the Riley County firefighters. She said he’s a young volunteer firefighter who is attending school in Manhattan.

He told her he didn’t want to be identified because he didn’t fight the fire to gain recognition,"

"One miracle happened Tuesday, when another round of fires blew through.

Greg saw a wall of smoke and the neighbor’s steers pouring out of the smoke near the ranch.

“They saw me over on the road,” he said. “I honked my horn at the steers and they knew someone might feed them. So they came out of the smoke to me and I was able to open a gate right across the road. There was another open gate and I was able to drag them out across to another wheat pasture where they started grazing.”

Then he broke down."

"It took three hours before we saw a hawk. A horned lizard was the only wildlife we saw moving across the ground the first two hours. We finally saw a herd of 19 deer. Some carried deep burns. I’m sure some of those have since died. Carcasses of many more littered the prairie. The sight of so many dead coyotes, the most cunning form of wildlife in Kansas, was enough to know the devastation."

Approximate cost is $4,000/mile to replace. Do the math!

The good thing is that in that area, a fence will easily last over 50 years with annual maintenance. The bad thing is that they can't wait 50 years to get it fenced.

Market Value of Products Sold in Clark County in 2012 (most recent I could locate) $126,151,000

That is right. It would take 31 years just to recover the cost of new fencing if farm income stayed steady and 100% of GROSS sales went to purchase new fencing.

Hay from Michigan...

There are good people practically everywhere, but helping others is SOP in farm country.

“I’m really glad their houses burned down with mine,” Katie Shaw said as her sisters broke out in laughter. “I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding.”

But they’ll build it back together, said Jenny Betschart, the oldest of the three women whom many in the Ashland area still refer to by their maiden name as the “Giles sisters.”

The three have divided up ranch tasks. Shaw has taken control of hay and feed, Betschart has dealt with the dead cattle and now government relations, and the third sister, Molly Beckford, is in charge of the living cattle."

"We don’t have to search for good in the world,

because we live amongst it. "

"Donated saddle keeps blessing as it finds its second new home in fire-ravaged Kansas"

"Drummond Ranch cowboy Chris Potter from Maple City, Kan. and three friends, Lance Alcorn, Russell Powell and Connor Grokett, went to Ashland, Kan., when the fires were still smoldering, to lend a hand.

Along with many donated supplies, the cowboys were hauling two saddles, hoping to find a couple of people who had lost theirs in the fire.

Both saddles were handmade and new. One was a trophy saddle Potter won ranch rodeoing and the other had already had a productive life, though it had never been on a horse.

Amy Potter, Chris's wife, said Justin and Brooke Cargill donated that handmade saddle for Junior Ranch Rodeo Association members to raffle."

""Our neighbor, Dave Harris, has given me $100 or $200 every year and told me to put it in the raffle – but he didn't want any tickets," Amy said. "His tack is 50 years old, so this year I wrote him some tickets." The JRRA raised $5,000 raffling the saddle.

Fate had a plan for that saddle. Harris won it in the drawing. When Harris learned of the trip to Ashland, he brought the saddle to Chris, along with $400, asking him to find someone who needed it more than he did."

"Teresa Jones, her daughter and eight other teenagers from Labette County in eastern Kansas finished dinner at a nearby table. The next morning they picked up debris from one of nearly 40 homes destroyed in the fires. Eventually they helped clean up damaged fences."

“We had three guys come in and say they came to help with fences,” Hazen said. “I figured they were locals, but their license plate was from Indiana. They’d just picked up and come to Ashland. We’ve had quite a few people just walk in and say, ‘What can I do? … Where do I need to go?"

From the article:

"...What’s the lesson in all this? Charity is best provided by grassroots, individual efforts, not a nameless faceless bureaucracy. Real charity provides a face of hope to the receiver and is a blessing to the giver. There is no reward in forcing your neighbor via taxation to pay for something you desire someone else to have whether it be a cell phone, free housing, food or even a new fence.

There is hope for America, if we can grasp this concept and live our lives more like the cowboys, ranchers, and farmers who derive their very existence from the land and nature itself which can sometimes be very cruel. That’s why they are some of the most down to earth people you would ever meet or know. After all, the closer to the earth you are, the more down to earth you will be.

With faith in God, some help from their neighbors and good hearted people across the country, they will climb back on the horse and get back to work. That’s the cowboy way..."

Via Daily Caller:

The government will allow ranchers affected by devastating wildfires to graze livestock on protected grasslands for a limited time, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Tuesday.

President Donald Trump directed the department to open emergency grazing in certain lands in the Conservation Reserve Protection program in Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma following wildfires that started March 6.

The USDA estimates that about 1.6 million acres of grassland have been burned, and more than 15,000 have been killed in the blaze.

“Ranchers are facing devastating conditions and economic calamity because of these wildfires and they need some relief, or else they face the total loss of their herds in many cases,” Michael Young, deputy acting secretary of the USDA, said in a statement.

Keep reading…

""We've got cattle buried everywhere, some alive, some not so alive," says rancher Troy Coen. "We've got dead cattle and calves with no mamas because their calves are there, but no cows.""

While reading it, I realized that our house fire back in 2011 was a mini version of these wild fires and our recovery was very similar. Never thought about our fire in this manner before. Friends, neighbors and strangers seem always to be present when needed...the real heart of America unaffected by politics.

"Time and money are tight for southwest Kansas rancher Bernie Smith. The March wildfires that burned more than 700,000 acre in Kansas killed more than 100 of his cattle and destroyed miles of fencing. He’s scrambling to get prepared for cold weather ahead.

“Grass is thin,” said Smith, who has put in before dawn to after dark days since the fire. “It’s going to be a long winter. We’re going to need to be feeding (hay bales) a lot.”

Rebuilding ranches after the wildfire could take a lifetime Rebuilding ranches after the wildfire could take a lifetime But last weekend Smith and other fire-affected friends sent 32 tons of nutritious hay they could have fed their own cattle to a rancher in Montana who’d just been through July’s 270,000-acre Lodgepole fire."