By Gretchen Keiser

While people in DeKalb and Fulton and Clayton counties face water restriction affecting their lawns and gardens at certain hours, their counterparts in north Georgia are looking at problems which cut into the heart of their lives.

A one-day journey to the White and Habersham County area served by St. Mark’s parish in Clarksville in north Georgia provided a glimpse of a region where families are drilling new wells to supply their homes and farmers are facing difficult, even heartbreaking decisions about their futures.

Mark and Dottie Wonder, parishioners at St. Mark’s, have cleared a 44-acre farm out of woods off Highway 17 just outside of Clarkesville. Moving to the area from Florida nine years ago, they both also work at traditional jobs in the community and, Mark Wonder emphasized, are not in the precarious situation of farm families who stand to lose everything in this historic drought.

No matter what happens in the months ahead, as rainfall lags 15 to 18 inches below normal in Georgia, “Ill still know I’ll have food and a place to stay,” Wonder said.

But the family is uncertain whether their small herd of 17 registered Polled Hereford cattle will be fed and watered in the fall and winter, and if not, what they will do.

The spring on their land that normally waters the cattle is so slow, “I don’t know if it is a fifth of what it should be,” said Wonder, as he took a break from a day spent on a long list of chores and projects on the land he has slowly cleared and worked with obvious care.

Raising purebred cattle that are sold to beef cattle farmers to bring up the quality of the stock, Wonder has worked year by year to improve this herd genetically. It is a process that cannot be hurried and that, like all aspect of farming and agriculture, has elements of risk and uncertainty. In the spring, summer and fall, the herd normally grazes on the land, finding plenty in the growing months. In the winter, farmers feed cattle with hay and corn or corn silage, whether grown or bought, to bring livestock through the lean months.

This year the cattle on Wonder’s land have already grazed all the land, even grazing in the farmhouse yard at one point, he said, because, at least, there was grass in the yard. He says he is fortunate that his herd can still graze, but walking across the pastures in the midday the sun is scorching hot, the land is bone dry and the grass is very short. “Grazing is fair to poor,” he said.

An effort to grow corn to offset the loss in hay and grass failed. “I planted two or three acres in corn” waiting until the end of June in hopes that rain would come, Wonder said, but the planing was followed by four weeks without rain. The fields were turned over to the cattle to graze on the stunted crop, at least drawing some small good from the loss.

The loss includes the cost of seed, fertilizer, herbicide and the future expense of having to buy at market prices what did not come cheaply from the land. Buying corn might run a farmer $8.50 a bag, rather than a dollar a bag if he grows it himself, Wonder calculated. A city dweller’s estimate of money in terms of time drew a friendly correction. “There’s no farmer that talks time,” said Wonder, because the work is so all-consuming the figure would be foolish to compute.

As for hay, “there won’t be any hay to be found” locally, he said, since any farmer fortunate enough to bring in hay this summer will need it for himself. While appreciative of the gestures being made by Midwestern farmers sending hay to the Southeast, Wonder said the quantity was so small that it’s “just delaying the agony” of running out of feed for the cattle.

Between the lack of feed and the slow-running water, the future for his carefully nurtured herd is “iffy,” he acknowledged, quickly underscoring that painful assessment with a comment about farm people.

“The funny thing about getting into this stuff,” Wonder said “—you’ll fight it to the end.”

“And I think that’s the case with most farmers,” he added. “That’s why they’re losing everything.”

In nearby White County, Lyle Lammers, who manages a Polled Hereford farm of 90 animals with this brother, Bill, agreed with Wonder’s assessment that the worst impact has yet to be felt. It will be in the winter months of December, January, February and March, they said, when the lack of feed will really decimate farmers’ herds. Lammers said they would normally have a “a couple thousand bales of hay by now” for winter needs, but, in fact, have “maybe 300.”

“We’re grazing what we normally mow” for hay, he said. Like Wonder, he has supplemental income and emphasized that he was faring well in comparison to many other farmers despite the loss in hay. “There’s a lot of people hurting a lot worse than I am,” he said.

Trying to place the plans to truck in hay to the Southeast from other areas in perspective, Lammers said “a truckload of hay would last us a day in the wintertime.”

Asked what he will do if the quantity falls far short, he said, “I try not to think about it,” hoping that improving weather will still turn the tide. If forced to sell cattle that would otherwise starve, farmers are having to sell into a clogged market at reduced prices. Wonder estimated that a purebred bull worth about $2,000 might have to be sold as beef cattle for $600 to $700, for example.

In addition, the financial loss does not take into account the years of care and tending and prevailing against odds that farmers have poured into their land and livestock.

“People who have not had farm experience find it hard to appreciate the problems the drought can cause a struggling farmer,” said Father Gerald Peterson, the pastor of St. Mark’s who grew up on a family farm in Kentucky and champions the cause of the small family farm in the United States.

Driving around north Georgia, Father Peterson observes “how short and shriveled corn looks, the dryness of the pastures where the cattle are grazing and how low the Chattahoochee River is right now.”

Families are “running out of water, it’s affecting our wells,” he said. Eventually that effect will be felt to an even greater degree in the metropolitan area as the springs that arise in the mountains slow and the branches extending south slacken.

Father Peterson said he hoped that the drought would bring about some reflecting about the land and its resources, particularly “an appreciation of the gifts of nature” and an awareness that they are limited gifts and secondly, “a greater willingness to share.” He is concerned by a sense that people are only bothered when water stops coming out of their own tap and will not conserve to help others.

If the drought persists “we are going to be in a crisis,” Father Peterson said, and the effect will be felt in a wider and wider circle.

At the moment the dryness and the unproductive soil are pitted against the stubborn optimism of people who have sunk a great deal of themselves into the land.

The worst months may be ahead, “but I also know the farmer will try everything there is to try,” Mark Wonder said.