Farmers battling Australia's worst drought on record are shooting cattle they can't feed, abandoning dustbowl farms to search for grass with hungry livestock and hand-feeding animals on moonscape paddocks.
The worst drought in 100 years has left farmers the length and breadth of Australia looking to the sky and praying for rain.
On the black soil plains near Walgett in the northwest of New South Wales state, diminutive May McKewon, 68, lives alone on her 6,000-acre (2,400-hectare) cattle property.
After seven years of drought, her son has left the family farm to earn some money, leaving her to run it on her own. Each day she hand-feeds her cattle, determined that her beloved Longview, owned by her family since the 1800s, will survive.
This is unbelievable. I sometimes wonder how healthy it is for me to obsess on drought so but I can't help myself. I read about this record drought in Australia and I wonder and worry. Will this be us next? Will I experience a drought like this? It's been dry around here, but has it been this bad? What would I do if a drought got this bad here?
Don't get me wrong, with the moisture that got put in the ground late last fall I can probably guarantee myself a half of grass crop so it won't take a lot more to limp through another year. I'm tired of limping through though. I want a wet, lush year for a change. What I want and what I get are two different things. I just don't want to see things as bad as in Australia right now.
I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there's a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us. Alice Hoffman
