Hard Times and Changing Seasons

Think About It Hard Times and Changing Seasons
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Faith Based Security NetworkFaith Based Security Network

Oct 19, 2024

I recently read the official (only) book on the history of my home county (Pratt County, Kansas). It’s where Grandpa, Dad, my three oldest children and I were born. It is a farm-rich county with good soil for wheat, corn and pasture grass. When there is sufficient moisture.

These days, when a few years come along of low moisture (such as we’ve had for the last several), it becomes a political football for candidates who claim man caused it.

Pioneers flocked to this county from the end of the civil war to 1890. Wagon trains came here as fast as the hostile Indian issues could be remedied. My great grandfather came here as an unmarried young man with his parents and family in 1879. The Chinn’s lived in dugouts along the creek until staking a claim on the farm in 1884.

Prior to 1890, pioneers found this good soil combined with good moisture and saw successful (though the hard toil cannot be overstated) crops. At times the crops were so rewarding those early pioneers could double their landholdings at the end of the harvest. Some large farms were being doubled each year.

In 1889 the moisture just stopped, and a 6-year drought settled in. Farmers got very little corn and what little corn did grow was only worth 10-cents per bushel.

All the buffalo chips (dried out buffalo manure) had been burned up (for home heating) and the buffalo had been killed to the brink of extinction. Coal became the main staple of heat but in those years enough corn was saved back each year to heat the home through the winter. They discovered corn was cheaper than coal and burned hotter (though quicker). Necessity was the mother of invention in many similar areas as this, as the pioneers adapted to hard times.

Many couldn’t survive it. They had come west in eager wagon trains, then trickled back east in depressed single family units with broken down wagons and livestock barely clinging to life.

The drought did end in 6 years and abundant crops returned.

Think About it …

Seasons come and go in our lives. Droughts do end and times of bounty will return.

Many coming through your church doors are in a personal drought and have nobody encouraging them or sharing perspective with them.

Protect, but be willing to listen and respond when someone needs help.

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