Tough times on the eastern Colorado plains

Eastern Colorado is in the third year of a drought. The Denver Post put this photo on page one today.

A woman who farms near Lamar in southeastern Colorado was, along with her husband, trapped inside her home for sixteen hours on Memorial Day weekend.

"You hear sand and dirt pounding against the window," said Hixson, a fifth-generation farmer whose land and home are 4 miles south of Lamar. "You know that it's your crop that's hitting the windows and blowing away, and it's not just affecting you, but also everyone else."

The article is written by Colleen O'Connor, who writes of the storms' aftermaths,

It's like the silent spring, empty and eerie. Hardly a tractor in sight, as far as the eye can see. No one laboring to prepare for the wheat harvest. No cattle grazing, because the grasses have gone dormant and ranchers are selling off their herds or trucking them elsewhere. "It looks like the surface of the moon," said one farmer named Stulp.

After three years of extreme drought, the soil of southeastern Colorado has been ground into a fine powder, like brown flour, that easily goes airborne.

The Stulps are using the latest technologies and soil conservation practices developed after the Dust Bowl, including no-till farming, which allows for growing crops without turning the soil.

"You don't want to risk unnecessary tillage," he said, pointing to a particularly erodible area of land. "If you plow that once, it will probably start blowing."

They also use stripper headers on combines when harvesting wheat, which strip only the grain, leaving most of the stalk standing, which helps keep the soil in place.

"We are changing our practices on the farm rapidly," Stulp said. "But is it rapid enough to deal with what's coming next?"