No Feed for the Cattle

March 28, 1933  Corney and Jacob drove seven miles to look for feed and found none.  I did miscellaneous things.  Mama and John sowed some in the garden.  Mama and Mary also sewed some.

Normally, the Siemens would pasture their cattle on wheat pasture in spring.  They probably had a couple dozen head of cattle.  (Cattle can be pastured on winter wheat from late fall to early spring.  It is one of the most nutritious sources of forage, and it helps the wheat to grow better by preventing it from growing too fast.)   However, a terrible drought had hit in the summer of 1932, and it had stayed dry, so the wheat that was planted in the fall of 1932 probably had come up very poorly or not all.  So the Siemens’ first choice of forage for their cattle was not available. 

Their second choice would have been bundles of feed that they had bound into shocks and brought in from the field.  But due to the drought they would have had very little of this, if any.  Apparently whatever they had was gone.  Usually, with winter wheat and their own feed, they could get their cattle through winter until grass pasture was ready.  Now they had nothing to feed their cattle and drove round the neighboring farms, asking for feed to sell.  (Feed here means kafir corn, sudangrass, baled hay, baled wheat, etc.)  And no one had any.  Until their own grass pasture would green out, they would need to buy feed, and this was clearly not going to be be easy or cheap.  And with the drought, who knew when the grass would be ready.  It was already starting out as a hard year.