The days are long. The wheat fields are golden. And the county roads are bustling with grain trucks.

Typically, I watch old grain trucks drive up and down the wash-boarded road in front of my parent’s house for almost 2 weeks. This year, however, harvest season was shortened significantly due to a damaging hailstorm that whipped through Gallatin County a couple weeks ago. The damage to area crops was estimated to be close to $50 million, and that’s not including crops such as potatoes, and any damage done to buildings and equipment. The farmland near Manhattan, MT is well known as the “seed potato capital”. Which means all those Idaho spuds you indulge in sprout from seeds grown just up the road from me. Many of those fields were destroyed. The damage was significant, and it came just a week before most farmers and ranchers would typically begin harvesting their crops and knocking down their second cutting of hay.  A neighboring rancher who has lived in the area for over 80 years said he had never witnessed a storm quite like it in his lifetime. It busted 14 windows in his house.

Needless to say, it damaged close to 70 percent of our grain crops. So what would normally take us 2 weeks to cut, haul, and bin, took about 4-5 days. Lucky for us, dad had purchased crop insurance on much of our fields. Our second cutting of hay, although not great, turned out better than anticipated (following the storm) and the cattle will be turned out to the remaining fields too peppered to harvest.

It takes a unique person to be a steward of the land. To nurture it day and night and then watch silently as Mother Nature rips through it with the passing of a storm cloud. I get discouraged when the coons find a way to my sweet corn. How does a rancher cope with acres and acres of lost money, sweat, and time?

My heart goes out to all the farmers and ranchers that nurture the land from sunrise to sunset to feed our nation.