MORAN — Water is the common denominator of agriculture.
Here, the main ingredient for successful crops and determining how much work goes into caring for livestock is rainfall. Other places — the Texas Panhandle comes to mind for George Meiwes Jr. — water is pumped from an aquifer to flood crop fields.
Meiwes has experienced both and he is just as euphoric as the next farmer when rain comes in the nick of time.
That occurred in November and was fortified in December, when rainfall came in unseasonable amounts to put a creek running at a nice clip through a pasture where he winters cattle.
“The rain in November left the ponds in good shape and filled the creek,” said Meiwes, who lives northeast of Moran with wife Janet, a rural mail carrier.
The creek’s filling was particularly important, not only to provide stockwater — a bone-dry fall had stockmen anxious as winter approached — but also because running water doesn’t freeze as quickly as that in a pond.
Chopping ice is a chore any farmer would prefer to avoid.
The late-year rain — Iola received 9.91 inches during November and December, about four inches above average — also put sufficient moisture in the ground to give fall-planted wheat a shot in the arm when the spring growing season starts.
The Meiweses will be honored at Wednesday night’s Allen County Soil Conservation District annual meeting with the soil and water conservation award, in recognition of the 17,561 feet of terraces and four acres of waterways they have constructed.
MEIWES, 62, was born in Oklahoma and moved with his family to semi-arid western Texas, between Hereford and Vegas, in 1956. The family came to Allen County in the mid-1960s, and he graduated from Moran High School in 1967.
He cut his vocational teeth on the farm and just out of high school ran a hay crew, earning two cents a bale.
“That was more than you made anywhere else,” Meiwes recalled, and also fortified that farm work was hard and long, often from sun-up to sun-down.
“It’s physically less demanding today,” Meiwes allowed, “but there is more stress, so much more involved. You have a lot on your mind.”
Equipment, with computerized controls, is much larger, a necessity with farm operations that have grown several times over those of his early days on the farm. Few farmsteads don’t have a computer at hand to track expenses, income and all the intricacies that go into raising crops and livestock.
The Meiwes operation encompasses 700 tilled acres, where he and son Greg plant corn, soybeans and wheat. They tend a 90-head cow-calf operation.
He credits the Natural Resources Conservation Service with making it possible through cost-share programs for farmers to reconfigure fields with terraces and waterways, which helps preserve topsoil that otherwise would wash away.
