For any of us grass farmers who call ourselves ranchers, the second half of the summer of 2021 was a little rough. A lack of rain made ponds dry up and kept the grass from growing. I was already feeding hay by the first of November.
Droughts are nothing new to farmers. As a Missourian, I really don’t have much reason to complain compared to our friends in the western United States, where years of drought are starting to cause severe water shortages. Due to our karst topography here in the Ozarks, we are blessed with something that most of the West doesn’t have: bountiful groundwater. If it doesn’t rain, we can always pump it out of the ground, if worst comes to worst, right?
Maybe not.
On my farm, I have three separate paddocks for my cattle, each with their own pond. Two of these three ponds are doing okay; they have a large catchment area and are well-constructed. Unfortunately, the third not only leaks, but has a small catchment. For the first time since I’ve had this land, there was a point this summer where the pond contained only mud. As luck would have it, this is the pond that waters my cows during the winter, so I needed to do something quickly to rectify the situation.
As a temporary solution, I placed a plastic tub and an automatic shut off float and hooked up the garden hose. The cows seemed to love this! You don’t realize just how much a cow can drink until you see them sucking what seems like a gallon of water per gulp out of that small container.
The auto-waterer worked for a while, but with colder weather coming soon, I would need another solution. I decided to have a concrete waterer installed, with a water supply buried below the frost line to ensure it shouldn’t freeze. Supposedly, these waterers don’t freeze until it gets really cold, but I’ll have to see it to believe it.
At first, I was becoming accustomed to the idea of watering my cows from the well. It is, after all, a clean and consistent source of water. No more worrying about the ponds. I wouldn’t even need a pond! Perhaps this represented an important paradigm shift in my cattle management… after all, it seemed like all of my neighbors had their own waterers as well. However, I quickly realized how foolish this was.
After just a short time of the increased demand from the waterer, our well pump started showing signs of failure. For example, we noticed that we would start to lose water pressure toward the end of a shower or bath. I think it’s been on its way out for a while, but this was the last straw. Things don’t last forever, and well pumps are no exception. We called to have it replaced.
Pulling a submersible well pump is no quick task. All of the pipe leading down the entire depth of the well has to be removed section by section, in our case, about 500 feet worth. Still, everything seemed to be going smoothly. Once they replaced the pump, they started the process over in reverse, slowly lowering the pump 20 feet at a time.
It wasn’t until they reached the bottom and tried to turn the pump on that they discovered a new and disturbing problem. When they switched on the pump, no water came out.
At 500 feet, there was no water in our well.
So they put in one and a half more sections to bring the depth down to 530 feet or so. They estimated we have about 20 feet of water in the well, when there really should be more like 100 feet. It’s clear that the water table has dropped significantly since the well was drilled 50 years ago.
Why is this happening? Well, part of it no doubt is the drought, but underground aquafers are not replenished overnight by a strong rain. It takes time for surface water to filter down through the soil and rocks into the groundwater. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a source of clean and safe drinking water.
Instead, it is our overuse of the aquafers that is causing them to go dry. All over Dent County (and many other places), farmers have been drilling wells and installing waterers for their cows, for years now. In the past, cattle would simple drink from a pond. That is how I raised my own cattle until my ponds started to dry up this year. Now that my neighbors and others in the area are sucking water from the ground to water their animals, there just simply isn’t as much ground water available.
Cows are hardy animals. They do just fine drinking out of a full pond. There’s really no reason to pump water 500ft out of the ground when you have plenty of surface water. In my case, the drought has left me little choice, but I will turn off the waterer if and when the ponds fill back up. As soon as I’m able, I’m planning on building a bigger pond to catch more rainwater in the future.
One person drilling a well or watering their cows isn’t enough to cause a problem, but when everyone converts from ponds to wells, it starts to affect everyone. I share my groundwater with my neighbors. It’s a resource that we all have to care for and conserve. If we don’t, we could easily end up like California, where farmers are being restricted from using water to irrigate their crops.
In Mexico City, they have sucked so much water from the ground that the city is sinking at an alarming rate. It’s simply not sustainable to continually drain the aquafers at a greater rate than they replenish themselves.
Our property originally had a cistern, which was popular back in the days before wells became common. Essentially, this was a stone-walled pit that collected rainwater. Some people still use these systems today, making use of the roof runoff that is otherwise wasted.
Older homes were designed to weather all four seasons, with large wrap around porches and windows that can provide a cross breeze in the summer and an insulating layer of air in the winter. These houses functioned without central heat or cooling. Today’s houses would be unlivable without these amenities. We have essentially taken poor construction designs and forced them to work by using more electricity and fuel than truly necessary had we used a better design.
When one house is designed poorly, it’s no big deal. But when entire cities are built this way, things start to add up. How much electricity do we waste on unnecessary heating and cooling?
Regardless of if or why the earth is warming, one thing we can certainly control is how we use our resources. Electricity is a limited resource. Water is a limited resource. Every single one of us needs to do a better job of conserving and making the most of what we have before its completely gone.
This was a wake-up call for me. I hope it will be for you as well.
