I'm the editor for Community Impact's New Braunfels and Northeast San Antonio Metrocom Editions. I previously worked as a Government Reporter for Community Impact—covering San Marcos, Buda and Kyle City Councils. I also covered Hays County Commissioners Court and wrote stories about development, business and the environment. 

Before working at Community Impact, I interned with Dave Campbell's Texas Football magazine. In this role, I learned Search Engine Optimization skills for written web content and social media. I also reported on college and high school football. I also worked as a news reporter at the Hays Free Press covering the Kyle, Buda, Wimberley and Dripping Springs areas. 

Frankie Bayne, Derek Emadi, Noël Lopreore and Lee Allbee give a first-hand account of what it’s like being a Central Texas farmer amid a 10-year-long drought.

By Amira Van Leeuwen 

ajv105@txstate.edu

CENTRAL TEXAS — Frankie Bayne, Montesino Farms Farm manager, grows up to 40 to 50 varieties of vegetables every year, but the unprecedented drought is making them welt.

“The plants definitely got much more stressed with the lack of rain and having that heat every single day,” Bayne said. Bayne said adding that she depends on her plants to be healthy because she can’t spray toxic pesticides that other farmers might use.

The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) U.S. Drought Monitor for Hays County indicates that about 53% of Hays County is in an exceptional drought. The effects of being in an exceptional drought are widespread crop loss, dead rangeland, producers' inability to plant fields and significant financial loss to agriculture.

Montesino Farms

Montesino Farms is located just three miles outside Wimberley, where a significant lack of rain has affected Montesino Farms’ crops and animals. Bayne tries to grow vegetables and plants distinguished by their quality and freshness to sell at local Central Texas farmer’s markets.

But this year, the farm has had to purchase more hay bales they don’t typically need for their cows. Bayne also noted how shaving the cows was a considerable expense since there was no grass.

“The biggest difference was kind of a huge added expense of basically having to shave the cows since there was no grass up until about three or four weeks ago,” she said.

During the summer, Bayne typically scales back her vegetable and flower production because she depends mostly on her own body’s effort to get things done. The heat has forced Bayne to decrease the amount of work.

“Having so many days over 100 degrees and just full-on, the whole summer, it kind of decreased the amount of work that I could do,” she said. “As a farmer and a person who is principled with the way that I farm, and in a real relationship with the land, I try to be really conscious of any water that I use, any time of year, all the time."

Bayne has also become hyperaware of the amount of water she uses and tries to keep watering down to a minimum. She utilizes shade cloth, drip tape, ground cover and mulching.

But Bayne is not the only Hays County farmer struggling with the drought. 

Vista Brewing

Vista Brewing is a 21-acre destination brewery and farm located just outside of Austin in Driftwood, where Noël Lopreore, Vista Brewing’s agriculture specialist, has been growing organic products for two years.

The California native is responsible for planning and carrying out the season, filling kitchen orders and selling excess produce.

“Coming from California, where we have like zero water, I didn’t feel like we were in a drought. I just don’t understand that because there’s so many bodies of water around here,” Lopreore said, “but I have seen with my own eyes water failing.”

Lopreore said she looked down a nearby creek, Onion Creek because she thought it was “gorgeous,” but now it is low.

Like many others, she has had to change her water practices because the water had a way of evaporating when she watered her crops, forcing her to water even longer.

“I eventually ended up covering the soil, which I know is a good practice and a lot of farmers around here do it, but I've never had to, out of necessity, do something like that,” Lopreore said. “It was kind of an extreme thing for me.”

She also had to use a truckload of hay to cover the soil to preserve any water she was using. Lopreore described this year’s heat as “detrimental.”

Nearly half of the 300 tomatoes she planted, which were supposed to be early crops, failed to flower and thus could not pollinate. She lost almost every single tomato. 

Lopreore added that nothing made food until it dropped to 93 degrees, and she was experiencing the same issue with her beans.

She also had to kill crops because they were not producing, and it was wasting water.

Lopreore ended up getting rid of her beans and even pulled out some tomatoes that were getting too old to make fruit based on water preservation.

“I wasn't gonna wait for them anymore,” Lopreore said.

“For a farmer, it’s a huger waste of money and energy. We do it because we don’t know; nobody knows. So you’re gonna work no matter what, but to plant as many rows as we did of food that made nothing…,” Lopreore said, trailing off. “Water’s the top commodity this year, so if it wasn’t succeeding, I’d shut the water off immediately.”

And in Caldwell and Medina County, things aren’t all that different as both counties are classified in the severe drought category, which shows poor pasture conditions and a decrease in crops.

Emadi Acres Farm

For farmer Derek Emadi all he’s known is drought. Emadi and his wife bought their property in 2011, and he has been farming for nearly nine years.

Emadi Acres is a small farm in Lockhart, concealed by large trees and bushes. Although he has 10 acres, Emadi grows on a small acreage because he believes it helps lead to a better quality of life.

Emadi grows under protection, also called high tunnels, which help hedge against hail, snow, downpours and droughts.

“I do that because as long as I’ve been farming, which is coming up almost on nine years, the weather continues to get crazier and crazier,” he said.

Emadi uses drip tape, landscape fabric and shading to prevent the soil from drying out faster.

“All these things I use to minimize not only my use of water but minimize the temperatures that I’m growing under,” Emadi said. “But even then, the drought is still too pervasive and still has detrimental effects on growing, even on my small scale.”

Like Bayne, he slows down his growing season around the summertime; however, the spring has turned out to be incredibly dry.

“During this time, I would usually be selling more peppers than I know what to do with, but with the high temperatures and the drying ability of the soil moisture, my peppers are just now coming online when I should’ve had them all summer,” Emadi said.

He has also noticed that his peppers get a blossom end rot — a large black spot on a pepper.

“It's pretty common in tomatoes as well, but during such a dry event, the peppers don't form fully. So you end up getting this big black spot that decays the pepper very quickly, and you just don't get a quality plan or a quality product, unfortunately,” Emadi said.

Southwest Farms

Lee Allbee and his wife have had Southwest Farms for about 10 years.

Southwest Farms sells pecans, vegetables, beef, hay, eggs and portable livestock shelters. They also custom plant for individuals who want cover crops. Allbee’s farm attends farmers' markets across small Central Texas towns like Hondo and Bandera to mid-sized cities like Dripping Springs and Boerne.

Their 80-acre property extends across three separate properties a couple of miles apart. Southwest Farms uses a well, which produces about 20 gallons of water per minute. But the farm’s primary water source for irrigation is from the Bexar Medina Atascosa (BMA) Water District allowing Southwest Farms to irrigate its land.

Allbee said the BMA canal system was shut off earlier this year because of the drought, which has caused the lake to run low. Typically, the canal system runs until November, but the decision to cut off the systems early was a move he described as "unprecedented."

“Usually, they only shut it off because it gets cold, and not many people are using it for winter crops. But this year, they shut it off when people were still really desperately wanting it, in September, when it was still hot,” Allbee said.

He said it’s been challenging to irrigate 40 to 80 acres of pasture ground without irrigation from the BMA Water District in September or October.

“We typically sell 5,000 square bales a year off the farm, as well as grazing cattle, and we will sell about 1,000 square bales this year because we just happened to keep it all for our own cattle,” Allbee said. “Without that water, it’s really affected us. You just can’t grow anything.”