WICHITA, Kan. _ Time and money are tight for southwest Kansas rancher Bernie Smith. The March wildfires that burned more than 700,000 acre in Kansas killed more than 100 of his cattle and destroyed miles of fencing. He's scrambling to get prepared for cold weather ahead.
"Grass is thin," said Smith, who has put in before dawn to after dark days since the fire. "It's going to be a long winter. We're going to need to be feeding (hay bales) a lot."
But recently Smith and other fire-affected friends sent 32 tons of nutritious hay they could have fed their own cattle to a rancher in Montana who'd just been through July's 270,000-acre Lodgepole fire.
Roughly 30 miles from Smith's spread, near the town of Protection, Tyler Woolfolk and his family are mired in work trying to recover from the Starbuck fire, the worst disaster to hit the ranch that's been in his family for five generations. But the Woolfolk Ranch recently shipped a huge load of hay to a South Dakota farmer struggling to keep his herds fed going through one of the region's worst-ever droughts.
The Smiths and Woolfolks are two of a growing number of people within the area torched by this spring's flames giving money, food, supplies and time to help out-of-state ranchers in trouble. Smith calls the effort the "ashes to ashes" project. Woolfolk said despite all they've lost, ranchers who survived Kansas' largest fire are the best equipped for offering assistance.
"Even though we're still picking up our own pieces we should be the first to step up when somebody needs help," Woolfolk said. "We know what it's like face that kind of (disaster). We know just how much it means to know there are other people out there who want to help you when you're at your lowest."
That sentiment is not lost on the ranchers coping with disasters in the Dakotas and Montana.
"That guys like that, with that much to do, would just load up and bring hay to us is so amazing," said Travis Brown, the Jordan, Mont. rancher who'd lost about 6,000 acres of grass in last month's fire. "They knew the need was there, and they just came. Then when we started talking to them you realize they, especially, understand the (challenges) that are in front of us."
