Your description is accurate. Most modern Americans would not last a season living under those conditions today. Few people have the skills and determination to do what our ancestors did. Also, the summers are hell out there on the Plains. Even in the Dakotas many 100 degree days in a row is not uncommon. Combine that with little rainfall, and it was easy to go hungry and get discouraged.
I couldn’t imagine it; locusts devouring crops, hailstorms destroying them...