{"id":13145,"date":"2012-06-25T07:00:28","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=13145"},"modified":"2012-06-22T17:57:52","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T22:57:52","slug":"life-by-the-drop-dry-the-beloved-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/06\/25\/life-by-the-drop-dry-the-beloved-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Life By the Drop: Dry, the Beloved Country"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Mose Buchele for StateImpact Texas<\/p>

A cow that perished on a ranch outside of Marfa was dried "like jerky" by the drought.<\/p><\/div>\n

Jake Silverstein of Texas Monthly contributed to this article.\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\n

It’s a disaster unlike any other. Floods, hurricanes and earthquakes enter swiftly and destroy efficiently. But a drought doesn’t herald it’s arrival. And people usually don’t pay attention to drought until the damage is already done.<\/p>\n

For most Texans, especially those living in big cities, a drought is usually little more than an irritation\u2014a brown lawn or a high water bill.<\/p>\n\n

But for Texans living in the country,\u00a0it\u2019s a little different. For them, a drought is impossible to ignore<\/a>.It can mean the end of a family tradition or a way of life.<\/p>\n

Yet it requires a truly extreme drought, like the one we suffered last year, before the average city-dweller sits up and takes notice.<\/p>\n

What happened during the drought was unprecedented\u2014an average of just 14.8 inches of rain fell across the entire state. It was the driest year in recorded Texas history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Filipa Rodrigues\/StateImpact Texas<\/p>

Pati Jacobs on her cattle ranch outside of Bastrop, Texas<\/p><\/div>\n

When Texas Monthly<\/em>, KUT and StateImpact Texas sat down to plan our special coverage of the drought, we knew we had to begin with the folks who are at the front lines. The people who watched clouds form on the horizons. People like Bastrop rancher Patti Jacobs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We lost effectively between 600 thousand and a million head of cattle in this state,” Jacobs says. “And what most people don\u2019t realize is, this wasn\u2019t a one year drought. It\u2019s been going on for 3 or 4 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agriculture losses eventually topped $7 and a half billion. Ranchers sold off whole herds; some gave sound horses away to keep them from starving. Hay salesmen like Valentine Hernandez traveled half the country each week to bring food back to desperate cattlemen.<\/p>\n

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