1977 was the third year of drought.
Farmers were disking the fields in February.
The picture to the left is of the Nishnabotna in June.
By now we were breaking some old "Dust Bowl" day records. I don't recall which ones exactly.
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1977 was the third year of drought. The picture to the left is of the Nishnabotna in June. By now we were breaking some old "Dust Bowl" day records. I don't recall which ones exactly. |
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The Nishnabotna creek stopped running for about 2 weeks in July. Our well dried up and wasn't dry since the middle 50s. My Great Uncle reminisced about the "Dirty 30s" and said that even the small creeks that flow into the Nishnabotna river didn't dry up. These small creeks were completely grassed out already in 1976. He also said that if they had fertilizers, herbicides & hybrid corn they would have faired much better back then. Corn yields in the fall of 1977 were 15 to 20 bushels an acre in the bottoms. The sidehills yielded 25 to 40 bpa. We had to use the 444 row crop bean head to combine the corn in the bottoms and some sidehills. The ears were so small we couldn't get the stripper plates close enough to remove the ears. |
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May of 1999 -- normal flow |
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June of 1998 during one of the floods. |
Time frame for our area.---
The middle 1930s = drought
The middle 1950s = drought
The middle 1970s = drought
The middle 1990s = flood
We had on and off dry years following the mid 1970s into the 1980s.
The drought of 1988 missed us. We got a couple of rains when no one else did so we had normal yields that year.
We started having problems with Bean Leaf beetle in the late 70s and during the 1980s but haven't had as much problem in the 90s.
