When my ancestors moved to this county, there were no trees. Only trees were along the Brazos River breaks. This is naturally dry country. Normal rainfall is about 25 inches per year. One of the last 3 years was 2-3/4” for the year. Has been over 100 years since anything approaching to that bad.
We have a spring fed stock pond. So we did not have to haul stock water. But we sold the cattle 3 years ago because of the cost of wintering them. Will rebuy, but with the price of Pairs running $3500, I am reluctant to do so yet. No upside. We have plenty of grazing now, but will gradually replace our herd.
We produce certified wheat seed. The drought has really crippled the production. And the price is way high. It has affected our sales. We are below the market price, but it is hard for producers to make the numbers work. The seed laws are a dangerous mine field. We comply completely with the law and that costs. We harvested no wheat in 2014, only seed we have for sale is carryover from 2013. That is about gone. I was short on our Registered seed and was unable to buy any. Have my Foundation seed planted, will plant what registered we have this week. Will be about 1/2 our normal acreage. So, we will have to grow ourselves out of this.
We have expanded our garden patches a bit since 2010, but we still have almost half and acre that's just trees, grass, and wildflowers. A few patches towards the back that are wild life cover areas.
Our beef prices are so expensive compared to other meats that we don't eat it very often. The cheapest has been poultry;Turkey which has been right around a buck a lb. all year, and Chicken around 80 cents per lb. We are probably going to go back to buying beef directly from the local farmer next year.
We buy eggs and milk from the farm, but our milk supplier got older and sold his herd, so we have to find another.
Your climate sounds very challenging for farming and ranching. My grandpa had a small dairy herd, and I used to help milk the cows by hand when I was a youngster. We had fresh milk every day to drink and the rest he sold to one of the large outfits that pasteurized it and distributed it to the grocery stores.