Wednesday
May 11, 2005
Klamath
Falls Herald and News
By HOLLY OWENS
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| A calf grazes in a field
along South Poe Valley Road Tuesday afternoon. Recent rain and
snow showers are greening up fields and pastures in the Klamath
Basin giving irrigators a big break. |
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Recent rainy and snowy weather is putting Klamath Basin
farmers and ranchers behind schedule.
"Instead of a little behind, we're big behind now," said Marshall
Staunton, a Tulelake-area onion and potato grower.
About 7,500 acres will be planted in fresh market
potatoes this year in the Klamath Basin. Staunton estimates that fewer than 200
acres had been planted as of Monday.
Potato growers only have a few more weeks for the weather to clear and the soil
to dry up in order to get their crop planted in time.
"June first is the drop-dead date for potatoes," Staunton said.
"We're getting scared. We'll work night and day if we have to to get the
crops in."
Even if a crop has made it into the ground, it's no guarantee for success with
the saturated soil. It can mean slow growing and ultimately low yields.
"The onions that are planted are slow coming," Staunton said. "We
were lucky to get about 95 percent of our onions in."
Some crops, like potatoes, won't thrive when planted in soggy and compacted
soil.
"You need a nice clod-free soil. If you do plant
when it's this wet chances are yields will be lower come fall," Staunton
said.
Rainy weather dealt a blow to onion growers last year at
harvest time, too.
"Last fall, onion farmers in particular got hit by the October rains,"
Staunton said. "October rains were 2.29 inches for Tulelake. Normal average
is .9 so we had well over two times normal.
"We had to fight the crop out of the ground and a couple guys didn't even
harvest."
Grain growers are having difficulties with spring
planting, too.
"Lots of grain fields have standing water. So they're running about two to
three weeks behind," Staunton said.
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| Irrigation wheel lines
sit idle in a field along South Poe Valley Road Tuesday
afternoon. Snow and rain showers are keeping Klamath Basin
farmers out of the field and behind schedule. |
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There's no such thing as normal or general trends for
tracking rainfall in April and May, Staunton said. But he estimates this year
could be a record maker, according to data from the Tulelake Irrigation
District.
"In 1935 they had 2.44 inches in April, followed by 1.75 in May,"
Staunton said. "I think for Tulelake it looks pretty certain that April and
May are at record pace."
Without any recent need for irrigation, water deliveries
for the Klamath Irrigation District have come to a halt, said Dave Solem, the
district's manager. Available water storage is being pushed to its maximum
capacity.
"Right now the lake is full, Tule Lake is full, the refuge is full. We
don't have many places to put water with no demands," Solem said. "In
those instances its going down Klamath River because the lake is full."
The recent rains are welcomed by most during a year when the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation is requesting a 15 percent reduction from water users.
"It is having an impact on the water conservation in the project,"
Solem said. "We're holding that lake up as long as we can.
"We're reducing our demand which pushes the draw down of the lake farther
into the summer. If we can maintain a full lake until, say, June then the draw
down curve gets you farther into the season more towards fall - and that's what
we're all hoping will happen."
Things are greening up for ranchers in the area, but it still makes it difficult
getting fences mended and ditches ready before irrigation starts.
"It slows things down," said Bob Valladao, a Bly area cattle rancher.
"You can't get all the work done. The rain, it's just slowing things
down."
And the rain greens up more than the pastures, it also helps with operation
expenses.
"Rains are definitely helping," Valladao said. "You're not
spending money for power and diesel for running pumps so it definitely
helps."
In Lake County, cattle rancher John O'Keefe is considering the extra
precipitation a boon.
"We're kind of considering it a blessing," O'Keefe said. "I guess
there are little issues like we can't get our farming done the day we might like
to start, but that's a pretty small price to pay for getting a timely
precipitation in a time of year that we needed it as bad as this."
Water reserves that O'Keefe hadn't planned on counting on during a drought year
are filling up with runoff.
"We've got water running into water holes on the desert that we thought
we'd have to get by without this year, and that's a real benefit," O'Keefe
said. "We've made some provisions to get by with less - but it will be just
that much nicer to have it there."
In Cedarville, it looks like the rains have turned around a bad year for cattle
rancher Will Cockrell.
"It made the year kind of survivable where before it wasn't," Cockrell
said. "Time will tell how the year turns out.
"We were pretty bad off until it rained. It's not so bad now."
The rain and snow are appreciated for the most part, even if the timeliness of
it all brings some risk.
"We want Mother Nature to be more polite and dump the snow in the mountains
in the winter like she's supposed to," Staunton said.
"We'll just have to cross our fingers as farmers and hope we get the crop
in."
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