Hope and herds are back on ranches in South Dakota

BELLE FOURCHE, S.D. — In the blurry days following the western South Dakota blizzard that devastated her family’s ranching operation, Jimmie Kammerer sometimes found herself in the pasture, walking among the few surviving cows.

“I would just go out and look at the cows that were still standing and thank God for them,” said Kammerer. She and her husband, Riley, lost 85 percent of their herd in an early October storm that cut a swath of destruction across western South Dakota, downing power lines, stranding motorists and killing more than 43,000 cows.

“It gave me hope,” Kammerer said.

Hope is exactly what many ranchers said they clung to as they grappled with a stunning loss, many of them within days or weeks of taking their cattle to market and bringing home an annual paycheck.

Now half a year out from the tragedy, and well into a spring that has offered plenty of moisture, a new calf crop and optimistic forecasts for the beef market, ranchers say they are slowly recovering and looking to the future.

“It does me well to look outside and see green grass and the calves running around with their tails up in the air,” said Amber West, who along with her husband, Zach, manages a ranch 15 miles south of Union Center. The couple lost almost 70 percent of their herd in the storm, dubbed Atlas.

Ranchers also received another bit of good news this week, as the final round of a $5.4 million Ranchers Relief Fund will be distributed to eligible ranchers affected by the blizzard.

It’s just one leg of help, said Silvia Christen, executive director of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, based in Rapid City.

“This did resonate with people,” she said, adding that the Ranchers Relief Fund accepted donations from “every state in the country and several foreign countries.”

For the Kammerers, help came fast, and from unexpected places — food from local churches, handwritten notes, boots from Nebraska, prepaid vaccinations. Someone paid their yearly seed bill at the local feed store. Another anonymous person paid credit for their fuel.

“There were hopeless moments,” Jimmie said. “And then your neighbor came along, your pastor came alongside you and spoke life into your heart.”

And then came the best of all — cattle. Truckloads of healthy, fertile cows and calves from states near and far made their way to families in South Dakota, some independently and some as part of the Heifers for South Dakota program. For many ranchers, it provided equity to help them secure their operating loans for the year.                                

Jimmie and Riley recently sat in their kitchen, sipping on coffee and snacking on freshly cut slices of homemade pumpkin bread. Their old border collie curled up on the rug by the front door, next to Riley’s pair of muddy rubber boots.

The couple moved after the storm from east of Sturgis to an irrigated ranch near Belle Fourche. They were not surprised that the agriculture community stepped in to help.

“In rural America, you see something that needs to be done and you just do it,” Riley said.

Out on the Kammerer ranch, bantam hens scattered as Jimmie drove an SUV toward the pasture. She called Riley, who was in a tractor in a nearby field, and asked about the best route to avoid getting stuck in the mud. It’s May, and there has been plenty of rain and snow in recent weeks, a chilling reminder of the unpredictability of the weather.

Both sides of the family have been in beef production for six or seven generations, and Jimmie’s father gave her advice after the storm.

“He said cattle have survived in this country for generations,” she said. “You can’t predict Mother Nature. You do all you can do to prepare, and then you give the rest to God.”

Dennis Todey, the state’s climatologist and a South Dakota State University professor, said there was little forecasting that could have been done to prevent the damage from October’s storm because of the amount of moisture that came down so suddenly and destructively.

And while National Weather Service hydrologists now predict moderate flooding in several Midwestern states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa, as the Mississippi and Illinois rivers threaten to swell, they predict only a small risk for western South Dakota because of the saturated soils.

Ranching, however fragile it may be in the hands of the weather, is not a reason to walk away from the industry or lifestyle, West said.

“Never, never, no,” she said, about thinking of quitting after the storm. “It never even occurred to us. It’s like a race car driver and he wrecks his car. Is he going to quit? No. This is what we do, and this is what we love.”