From The Fields

By Terry Munz

We haven’t had much rain this year. I grow a forage mix for the horse market—mainly grain and hay. I’m cutting it right now. I’m probably going to cut about half of what I planted. It’s pretty poor, even that.

Last year wasn’t too bad, but for the last five years, it’s been really tough. When you dry farm and you only get 6 1/2 inches of rain, nothing grows very well. I average about 12 inches here, but I haven’t seen that in six years. All this talk of El Niño—the northern state did pretty well, but not the southern state.

A little bit west of me, a flash flood went through in mid-October and it brought another couple of inches of rain. And the fields I have up there are a little bit better; they’re worth cutting—maybe half to three-quarters of a ton an acre. That’s not saying much, when my average here is about a ton and a quarter, but I don’t know what average is anymore. That’s what I’m cutting now.

About half I’m going to abandon and just put my cows on it. But I don’t have many cows anymore. I used to have about 30 head about five years ago, but I’ve been selling them off to pay for feeding the rest of them. I’m barely hanging on here; it’s really changed my operation a lot.

I have a lot of old vehicles and buildings around, so film crews do some filming here on the property. In fact, I’m waiting on a film scout to show up any minute now. They do commercial shoots and fashion shoots. I’m on a film guide and a lot of people who’ve been here know about me. Word of mouth is a lot of it. I maybe do half a dozen things a year.