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SPRING RAIN | BAKER COUNTY
Grass:
Continued from Page 9
commissioner and signed a declaration
in early April declaring a drought emer-
gency in the county.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown later approved
that declaration, making county farmers
and ranchers eligible for potential state and
federal assistance, including more fl exibil-
ity in how they use their water rights.
Bennett said some fi elds on his ranch
that weren’t irrigated, due to a lack of water,
were essentially bare at the start of spring.
But after the rains came, that grass
sprouted and in some places it was more
than a foot tall in late June.
“It really made a diff erence,” Bennett
said.
The bountiful grass is a boon in two
main ways.
First, the rangeland where many of the
county’s cattle graze during the spring,
summer and early fall will produce much
more forage than during 2021, when the
O
S
combination of drought and a record-break-
ing heat wave in late June left pastures
parched.
That ample forage, much of it on public
land grazing allotments, also should reduce
the demand for leased private land pastures
in Baker County, Bennett said, making it
easier for local ranchers to fi nd suitable pas-
ture for their herds.
hay fetching $200 per ton, a fi gure he called
“mind-boggling.”
Irrigation supplies improve
The damp spring has also yielded
another major advantage that farmers and
ranchers hope for during the critical season
— it saved irrigation water.
Pickard said that in early April, farm-
“I HAVEN’T SEEN ANYTHING AS SIGNIFICANT
AS THIS IN A LONG TIME. IN EARLY APRIL IT
LOOKED WORSE THAN BLEAK. BUT IT DID A
180. THOSE RAINS WERE WONDERFUL.”
— Mark Ward, Baker Valley farmer
Second, the higher yields in hay crops
this year will reduce the need for some
ranchers to buy supplemental hay. And
that’s a good thing to avoid, Bennett said,
with hay prices, driven by last year’s skimpy
crop, running far above average.
Bennett said he has seen feeder-quality
ers and ranchers in the Keating Valley were
beginning to tap Thief Valley Reservoir, sev-
eral miles upstream along the Powder River.
Frederick Phillips said that is “really
unusual.”
But then the rain started.
And it continued so long that the reser-
voir remained full — even slightly above its
offi cial capacity — at the end of June.
“Now we’ve got it made for water into
September,” Pickard said.
Had the weather reversal not happened
— had the spring of 2022 more resembled
its immediate predecessor, when every
month was drier than usual — Pickard said
he and his neighbors might well have been
out of irrigation water by the end of June.
Having instead a full reservoir to draw
on is a welcome, if unexpected, boon.
Phillips said he’s rarely if ever seen Thief
Valley fi ll so late in the year — the reservoir
was still at 100% of capacity on the penulti-
mate day of June.
He said he was optimistic, earlier in the
spring, that the reservoir would eventually
fi ll, considering the amount of snow in the
Elkhorn Mountains, whose streams feed the
reservoir.
But Phillips was also a bit leery.
In 2021 the snowpack was similar, but
much of the melting snow soaked into the
soil rather than running off into streams.
See Grass, Page 13
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