After Beryl, Houston Area Farmers Come Together to Face Unique Challenges

PORTER, Texas (AP) — Hurricanes cause trouble for everyone, but farmers have a whole other list of problems.

Beryl has been no exception: Over the past week, the storm damaged crops, soaked rabbits and chickens, terrified goats, put horses at risk of developing colic and left cows without fences to keep them penned in. And the lasting power outages have been particularly devastating for animal caretakers who urgently need water, feed and supplies.

But with trees downed, power out, gas in short supply and many local businesses temporarily out of commission, farmers in the Houston area have had to find ways to cope, relying on each other, neighbors and community resources to recover.

“We all take care of each other,” said Tracy Hord, 57, who owns an equestrian facility with her husband Greg on the outskirts of Houston, which boards and trains horses. “The normal public doesn’t know what it takes … to take care of this. You have to keep it moving because the horses can’t do without or your livestock can’t do without.”

They already have driven about an hour each way into the city this week as they scrambled to get enough bedding, the wooden shavings that line the horses’ stalls.

Extreme weather like drought, floods and storms all hit farmers hard, especially those with small outfits, and scientists expect many of those nasty conditions to get worse as a result of climate change.

In the areas of Texas closer to the coast, there are more individual producers with relatively smaller farms, said Monty Dozier, program director for the Texas A&M agricultural extension’s Disaster Assessment and Recovery Unit, which checks in on farmers after destructive weather events.

Dozier estimated there are between 14,000 and 20,000 head of cattle alone in the area between Houston and Beaumont.

That many livestock usually can’t be evacuated before a storm. Occasionally people will move horses or other smaller animals, but otherwise farmers have to prepare by moving their herds to higher ground and making sure they have a way to shelter in place.

Catherine Ward, the owner of One Acre Farm, which offers youth education and autism therapy about 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Houston in Porter, Texas, watched the reactions of her 88 animals as wind gusts bent, snapped and toppled trees.

“The goats were able to come into shelter,” Ward said. “Every time I would go to the back door to look, they’re all looking like, ‘Momma, please come help. We don’t know what’s happening.'”

After Beryl passed, Ward surveyed the damage and found that a tree had fallen on the roof of the chicken and rabbit pen, fences were broken and metal sheets had been twisted and tossed to the ground. The farm remained without power on Friday and the steady hum of a portable generator filled the air.

The Texas legislature in 2019 gave funding to Texas A&M University to create a system for farmers to respond to disasters in line with its recommendations after Hurricane Harvey slammed the state in 2017, Dozier said.

Since then, the program’s 26 agents, supported occasionally by more agents from the university’s agricultural extension arm, have helped members of the agriculture industry respond to wildfires, tornadoes, floods and more across the state. Producers can fill out a damage survey online, requesting additional resources, advice or an in-person visit if they need it.

Texas A&M’s response team provides pickup points with animal supplies after storms but also tries to move out quickly once local operators are back in business. That’s someone’s livelihood too, Dozier said.

One such operator, Chuck Ridder, has owned Knox Drive Farm & Feed for about 20 years and says that whenever something like this happens, he will open even without electricity.

“We know animals have to eat,” he said.

Before Beryl hit, Ridder moved hundreds of bags to storage areas several feet off the ground in case the warehouse was flooded. Luckily, he said, water never entered his warehouse. But Beryl’s strong winds damaged one of the warehouse’s metal doors. He had to put the door back in place as the storm was still passing through Porter to ensure rain and wind didn’t damage his feed supply inside the warehouse.

Many Texas farmers aren’t strangers to bad weather.

“One of my producers told me, ‘If you farm in Texas, you need to learn to farm in a continuous drought interrupted by times of flooding,'” Dozier said. “That’s the mindset that you need to have.”

It’s a challenging reality that means people have to trust each other in hard times, and many of them do.

Customers, neighbors and friends alike come through Ridder’s doors knowing they’ll likely be able to get what they need even when the power is out. One of Ridder’s good friends, Tommy Johnson, is a longtime customer who keeps his 14 South African Boer goats in a pen by Ridder’s warehouse.

Ridder said Johnson knows where the key is located to unlock the back door of his business.

“Anytime that they need something, just leave a note,” Ridder said.

Ridder said when he needed a chainsaw to cut down some trees that were knocked down around his store and home, Johnson picked one up for him.

“We lean on each other, try to help the best we can,” Johnson said.

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Walling reported from Chicago.

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