From the Home Place

May 26, 2026

When I put our Coffee dog out at daylight, the weather was calm and dry. Though it looks like a nice bank of clouds off to the far west of us, the weather man isn’t making any promises about rain in this area in the near future, so please continue to pray for rain here.

I remember the summer of 1965 being very much like this one has been so far. Spring calving was way too easy; we went the whole season without losing any calves. But then came the hot, extremely dry summer and we lost four or five calves from eating dirt. The grass never got over a couple of inches tall and the momma cows didn’t carry any extra flesh, nor any extra milk.

The wind blew almost every day, burning what grass there was. We never started one tractor come haying season; there was no need to waste the fuel trying to find something to mow. Back then, we ran our calves over to the late fall of their yearling year. Our yearlings went to town a month early, weighing not much more than our calves usually weighed at weaning.

When moisture did finally show up in August, it came in the form of softball size hail balls. The whole county side looked like we had just had a blizzard. Everywhere you looked it was white! I can remember going to our old dirt cellar with Mom, Dad and my sisters when the tornado revealed itself off to the south-east of us. It hailed so hard that some of the hail balls came through the two feet of dirt that was on top of the cellar.

When the storm finally broke and we went outside, there wasn’t much left. The house and barns all had holes in them. We shoveled buckets and buckets of hail out of the house, with no windows left in it! All of the windows were gone out of the pickup and there were holes in the cab and the hood of it.

As soon as we could Dad and I walked to the corrals west of the house. There we found a dead milk cow, a dead colt and the rest of the horses were so beat up that we couldn’t ride them for weeks. All three bum lambs were dead, inside the sheep-barn. There we dead chickens laying all over the place, even inside the chicken house.

Yet, we were blessed because the tornado had just missed us. My uncle who lived off to the east of us wasn’t quite so lucky. The tornado turned their chicken house upside down and didn’t even break the eggs that were in the nests. It took days for the live hens to make their way back home. The twister pulled the windmill, that was on the west side of their house, out of the ground – pipe and all – and shoved the tower of the windmill through their kitchen window on the east side of their house, laying it on their kitchen table. Thankfully they too were in their cellar.

For the next months, you couldn’t hardly stand to ride through pastures to check on what cattle that were left, because of the stench of the dead cattle and sheep scattered across pastures for miles. For the most part, everyone had insurance on their vehicles and houses, so it didn’t take the adjustor very long to show up and start figuring how to get windows and rooves on houses and outbuildings.

For miles in every direction of our place, all of the fences were rolled up in massive balls of twisted barbed wire and fence posts. The thing I remember the most was digging fence post holes and stretching wire all the rest of the year, until the ground froze.

All spring and summer we had been asking for moisture, it was just a tad bit tough when it showed up. I remember walking for miles to check on critters after the hail melted. The ground looked live divots on an over watered golf course green. However, the really good thing about all of the hail balls, there were dead rattle snakes everywhere!

Well, all of that is to say, please pray that our Lord will send considerable “rain” to this whole area, ’cause I learned that asking for “moisture” can be rough.

Praising God for His provision and protection with you, Neal