Hay for Texas

               On August the 25^th through the 28^th Hurricane Harvey hit Texas with a vengeance. Most news coverage focused on the countless people up rooted from their homes in the cities, but a few reports came out about the farmers in that area. Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared 54 counties a disaster area. According to Texas A&M University Livestock economist David Anderson “about 27 percent of the state’s 4.46 million head cow herd was in those 54 counties”. As this bit of news came in it was the talk of our small farming community here in Livingston County Ky. This news hit very close to home for one of the young farmers in our community. This young man has a row crop and cattle operation, along with a livestock hauling business that does a good amount of work for some clients in Texas. He was receiving firsthand accounts of the storm and how it had effected the livestock in that area. Most all of the pastures were under water, or unusable due to large amount of mud and silt on the grass. This meant that if the cattle were to survive, hay was their only option at that point.

               Around September the 6^th this young man started asking if people in the area would be interested in trying to help some of these effected areas in Texas. This young man, and some other community leaders had a desire to help and approached Extension for further input and organization. This lead to a meeting of the local Cattleman’s Association, the Young Farmers group, and members of the local Extension AG Council. From this meeting they decided they wanted to donate hay to some of the affected areas that our county had connections with. Livingston County Extension owns the local fair grounds, which has a large pole barn and large paved parking lot idea for loading and unloading trucks. Livingston county ANR offered the use of our fair grounds as a staging and collection point for the hay drive. Also Livingston ANR helped with getting the word out by using our digital sign, and the ANR Facebook sight. Livingston ANR also contacted our local tractor dealership and they donated the use of a loader tractor for unloading and loading hay for the project. September the 13^th through the 17^th hay would be received and loaded on trucks to Texas. The work of unloading and loading was done by volunteers from all three organizations.

The project took donations of hay from not only Livingston county that donated 150 round rolls and 500 square bales, but another 150 round roles and 20 large square bales from the surrounding counties of Crittenden and Caldwell . Trucking was donated from trucks from Ohio and Georgia. This gave the grand total of hay donated to 300 round roles, 500 square bales, and 20 large square bales. As of the last of September all but 60 round roles of hay had been delivered to hard hit farmers in Texas.