Jarod Opperman / The BulletinChris Casad and Thomas McGehee help customers Wednesday at the Juniper Jungle Farms booth at the Bend Farmers Market. The farm has received its normal allotment of water this season.

BROTHERS —

A dozen head of cattle grazed quietly in morning sunlight Wednesday along Bear Creek, a small stream that carves a deep ravine through the juniper-studded rimrock country south of Prineville Reservoir.

Their pasture should be knee-high in hay, but drought in Crook County this year means Ron Miller, manager of Vaquero Valley Ranch & Cattle Co., cannot find enough water to grow enough hay to feed his 150 head through the coming winter.

Instead, he’ll have to buy it, a significant expense for ranchers who cannot grow their own, and this is the third summer Miller has been unable to grow enough.

Normally, Miller takes water from Bear Creek to fill a small pond, from which he irrigates his three hay fields of 25 to 35 acres each. The creek is dry, and his pumps cannot draw enough water from the aquifer to irrigate all three hayfields. His cattle graze instead on one field while he alternately irrigates the other two.

“We’re lucky we’re able to buy hay and make a little hay. We haven’t had to reduce our numbers (of cattle) because of the drought, yet,” Miller said. “Never say no. It could be, and a lot of people could be in that same boat.”

Drought falls unevenly on farmers and ranchers in Central Oregon. Their ability to cope with drought depends on their location, the source of their water and their water rights, said Kyle Gorman, South Central Region manager for the Oregon Water Resources Department.

Miller’s ranch is outside of any irrigation district. He feels the drought directly. At the other end of the spectrum, farmers within the Central Oregon Irrigation District are positioned best. They take their water from the Deschutes River; reservoirs on that system provide a buffer from short-term drought.

In between, irrigation districts like Three Sisters and North Unit, the first with little storage capacity and the second with junior water rights, both reduced the amount of water they deliver to irrigators this season because of the drought.

“If we look at the accumulated snowpack over this past winter, the below average precipitation, the warm temps and the current stream flow and soil moisture, all those combined, you sum them up and we’re below normal,” Gorman said. “When you put that all together, it spells drought.”

Miller and other producers who sell directly to consumers through community-supported agriculture plans or at farmers markets said they have not passed on costs to the consumer as a result of the drought. So far, they said, they’ve managed their operations to compensate for any reduction in their water allotments while market competition keeps prices in check.

However, another winter with a below-average snowpack will create a desperate situation among farmers and ranchers in Central Oregon, experts said.

In Jefferson County, for example, large commercial farmers allowed fields to lie fallow this year because of a lower water allotment. Elsewhere, officials at some irrigation districts — there are seven in Central Oregon — are contemplating moves to conserve water now, ahead of a what may be a disappointing winter, they said.

Chris Casad, of Juniper Jungle Farms, a 10-acre operation east of Bend, said he’s getting his normal allotment this season. He sells vegetables and other products at local farmers markets, and said he’s fortunate his farm is served by the Central Oregon Irrigation District.

“We’re lucky that we’re tucked up in the biggest water catchment in the Cascades,” he said. “We’re operating normally; the (irrigation) canals are flowing as normal, and we’re hoping for a better winter than last winter.”

Craig Horrell, manager of the Central Oregon Irrigation District, in April wrote that reservoirs were full and he anticipated having enough water to satisfy users’ normal water needs. But, he cautioned that the irrigation district’s board may reduce deliveries if reservoir levels drop too far. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation showed Wickiup Reservoir at 41 percent capacity on Wednesday, and Crane Prairie at 54 percent, according to the bureau website.

“As long as that water is going to flow,” Casad said recently, “the farms are going to get water.”

Technically, COID is delivering water from the Deschutes River, which is fed by springs and snowpack runoff in the Cascade Mountains. To conserve water for next year, the district may reduce its delivery in early September, Horrell said Thursday.

The North Unit Irrigation District in Jefferson County, whose water rights are junior to other districts upstream, has no further rights to flowing water and is drawing water from Wickiup Reservoir, said Gorman, of the Water Resources Department.

“In the case of COID, it’s not using any stored water,” he said Thursday. “The North Unit is relying completely on stored water.”

The North Unit district lowered its delivery this season from 2.5 acre-feet per acre, total, to 2.25 acre-feet for users drawing water from the Deschutes River and 1.25 acre-feet for users drawing from the Crooked River. The North Unit has the right to use any naturally flowing water in the Deschutes River after other districts take their share, said district General Manager Mike Britton.

This year, there’s none left to share; Deschutes River users are actually drawing from Wickiup Reservoir, the North Unit’s stored water. The North Unit has about 850 irrigators on its system, which covers 60,000 acres, Britton said. Most users are large farms growing hay, carrot seed, grass seed and other crops.

“Because of the allocation, farmers are having to fallow ground this year,” Britton said Friday. “That obviously reduces their ability to produce income.”

The Three Sisters Irrigation District is less fortunate. That district has no real storage capacity and this season trimmed its water deliveries due to low flows caused by reduced runoff from the Cascade Mountains.

Most of the system’s approximately 180 irrigators, mostly small farmers and ranchers, will receive a fraction of the amount they receive in a good year, said Jim Williams, the district ditch rider. The Three Sisters district takes its water from Whychus Creek but can provide well water to some users at additional cost, he said.

“We have a supplemental well that we can divvy out to certain people on a first-come, first-served basis,” he said Thursday. “A lot don’t want it, a few of them do. Those people are getting close to 50 to 80 percent (of normal). Everybody else is getting 30 percent.”

One of them, Sarahlee Lawrence, runs Rainshadow Organics, a small farm near Terrebonne with 27 irrigated acres. She received about 25 percent of her usual allotment in the latest irrigation period, said Lawrence, who also sells produce at local farmers markets. The drought has hit her operation hard, and she said she took steps to conserve water.

“I really changed what I grow, significantly,” she said recently. “I elected to keep half my ground in a cover crop, for one, Austrian peas, about 15 acres.”

She obtained two grants, one from the Oregon Department of Forestry to remove juniper trees, which soak up water, from 57 acres. Another grant, from the National Resources Conservation Service, helped pay to install drip lines, a more efficient method of irrigation.

“They require super low pressure and use less water than a wheel line,” Lawrence said.

Back at the ranch along Bear Creek, Miller mulled the prospects for finding enough hay to last the winter. He said he’s applied for drought relief through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, money he said would subsidize hay purchases, if he can find any.

It’s a desperate time for the ranch, he said, but drought is nothing new. He recalled stories his father told of drought in the 1930s when his family ran cattle in Harney County. One year, Miller’s grandfather sent his two young sons, just boys at the time, to camp on the summer pasture on Beaty’s Butte, Miller said.

“There was a little water,” he said. “They had to hold the cows back and let them come in one at a time (to drink). They did that all summer. We think we have it tough here now. That was tough.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com