Archives for January 2014

 Two months after Donley County voters approved the sale of alcoholic beverages, local businesses are still waiting for city governments to take action on the subject.

Voters authorized the sale of all alcoholic beverages, including mixed drinks, on November 5, but the cities of Clarendon and Hedley have not yet adopted rules governing such sales. That may change soon, however.

Clarendon officials will meet with representatives of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission on Friday afternoon, January 10, at 3:00 to discuss what the city can do and what other cities have done.

City Hall says no action will be taken at Friday’s meeting, but the item is scheduled to be on the agenda for the regular board meeting next Tuesday, January 14, at 7 p.m., and action may or may not be taken at that time.

Four establishments in Clarendon – Lowe’s Family Center, Allsup’s, and both CEFCO convenience stores – have already published legal notices of their intent to apply for alcohol permits, but those applications have not gone forward, pending action by the board of aldermen.

The Hedley Board of Aldermen is also planning to meet this Thursday, January 9, and the governance of alcohol sales in that city is on the agenda but for discussion only.

Alcohol sales in the City of Howardwick were already legal prior to the November election.

The 2014 Donley County Junior Livestock Show will be held Saturday, January 11, at 9:00 a.m. at the Donley County Activity Center.

The show will also feature Pee Wee Showmanship Lamb, Pig and Goat Shows for all kids second grade and under. The Pee Wee lamb show will be immediately following the Junior Show followed by the goats, heifers, steers and pigs. Animals will be provided by the 4-H and area FFA Chapter members.

Virginia Patten will have the concession stand open to the public on Friday from 5-8 and all day Saturday with tacos, chili, Frito pie, and breakfast burrito and lots more.

The Buyers’ Meal is Saturday evening at 6:00 with the Livestock Sale immediately following.

The following youth will be showing livestock at the show. An asterisk denotes kids showing for both Clarendon FFA and Donley County 4H.

Hedley FFA: Kati Adams, Christopher Cabler, Cody Cabler, Zach Chapman,, Christopher Gonzalez, Tristen Harper, Tyler Harper, Arden Haught, Lane Hinton, Makinzie Hinton, Gilbert Norberg Hjelmar, McKayla Johnson, Clay King, Kallie Lindsey, Kyle Lindsey, Kadee Lockeby, Christian Lucero, Casey McCleskey, Cooper McCleskey, Kaylaneth Mendoza, Caylor Monroe, Collin Monroe, Kylie Monroe, Klaiton Moore, Jake Owens, Misit Scott, and Wyatt Wheatly.

Donley County 4H: Ethan Babcock, Dalton Benson, Jade Benson, Charlotte Craft, Elizabeth Craft, Kaitlyn Davis, Brandalyn Ellis, Brenna Ellis, Clint Franks, Cole Franks, Laney Gates, Seth Greer, Jayde Gribble, Taylor Halsell, Hadleigh Halsell, Calder Havens, Payton Havens, Jencie Hernandez, Hannah Hommel, Tres Hommel,* Brittney McAnear, Kelsey McAnear, Shelby O’Keefe, Jodee Pigg, Emeri Robinson, Braylee Shields, Alysse Simpson,* Malerie Simpson, Madison Smith, Kolt Stevenson, Koyt Tucek, and Hailey Wilson.

Clarendon FFA: Porshe Henderson, Tres Hommel,* Joseph Jaramillo, Ray Jaramillo, Chance McAnear, and Alysse Simpson.*

Those interested in serving on local boards can start picking up applications next week as seven local governments prepare for elections.

The Donley County Hospital Board, which oversees indigent care and the local ambulance service, has four positions up for election this year. The two-year terms are elected at-large in Donley County, but candidates must sign up for a specific place. Those seats are currently held by Jan Farris – Place 4, Jeannie Owens – Place 5, Mark C. White – Place 6, and Lori Howard – Place 7.

The Clarendon College District has three six-year terms available on the Board of Regents, and the positions are also elected at-large in Donley County. Those seats are held by Dr. John Howard, Dr. Bill Sansing, and Jack Moreman.

Clarendon ISD has two at-large positions available on the Board of Trustees for three-year terms, and Reneé Betts and Weldon Sears are the incumbents.

Hedley ISD has three at-large positions on its Board of Trustees, and those are also three-year terms elected at-large. Those seats are currently held by Ted Wright, Karen Watt, and Tonja Ruthardt.

Three seats on the Clarendon Board of Aldermen are up this spring. Those are two-year terms elected at-large in the city. Will Thompson is finishing one of those terms, and Beverly Burrow and Larry Jeffers hold the other two positions, having been elected to serve out unexpired terms in a special election last November.

The City of Hedley has three positions available on the May ballot. The two-year, at-large terms of Mayor Leon Ward and Aldermen Lonnie Roby and Carrie Butler are up this year.

In Howardwick, the terms of Gene Rogers, Cory Longan, and Robert Brewster on the Board of Aldermen are expiring. Those are two-year terms elected at-large.

Filing for these positions begins January 29 and runs through February 28. Elections will be held May 10.

By Corrie MacLaggan & Neena Satija, The Texas Tribune
SPEARMAN — Inside Mike Skinner’s house in this town in the northern part of the Texas Panhandle is a cage with finches and parakeets — the only livestock he has left, he says, smiling, now that he has sold the family farm.
“My grandfather told me that the only way to stop farming is to die,” Skinner, 67, said.
Last spring he sold the land where he, his brother, his parents and his grandparents had grown wheat and grain sorghum. The farm holds decades of memories: the creepy feeling as a preschool child of reaching his hand under hens to grab eggs, the sound of his grandmother playing Woody Guthrie songs on the piano. But his family members have died, he has no children, and farming now seems unpredictable and lonely.

Skinner is like a growing number of Texans who are leaving the land because of opportunities in urban areas, a spike in land prices and concerns about risky weather patterns fueled by a blockbuster drought that continues to plague much of the state. The agricultural workforce is also aging.
“A lot of these guys, their kids have chosen not to come back and farm, and so they don’t really have anybody to leave the land to,” said DeDe Jones, an economist at Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Amarillo.
Small and midsize farms and ranches in Texas — those under 2,000 acres — have been declining at a rate of 250,000 acres a year, according to the Texas A&M Institute of Renewable Natural Resources. From 1997 to 2007, the institute estimates, Texas lost about 1.5 million acres of agricultural land and is expected to lose a million more by 2020.
And while Texas as a whole is growing rapidly, the 96 counties that lost population from 2010 to 2012 are mostly in heavily agricultural West Texas and the Panhandle, the Office of the State Demographer said.
In other areas, urban growth is taking over.
“The scariest thing is what’s happening to the blacklands;  that’s the land that’s being built out,” Billy Howe, the state legislative director for the Texas Farm Bureau, said, referring to cropland that lines Interstate 35, around which the swelling metropolitan areas of Austin, Dallas and San Antonio are clustered.
A century ago, Williamson County, north of Austin, was a top cotton producer. “It’s nothing but houses now, for the most part,” Howe said.
Darren Hudson, a professor of agricultural economics at Texas Tech University, said a decline in population did not always mean less farming. Technological advances have allowed many farms and ranches in the Panhandle to expand, he said, while maintaining production levels with fewer workers.
When land is sold there, “it doesn’t go away,” Hudson said. “Their neighbor gobbles it up, and it gets bigger.”
Prices for agricultural land in Texas have risen significantly, another incentive to those who are considering selling.
But the risks of running an agricultural business have also increased. A tractor or combine can now cost $300,000, meaning an operation must be larger than in years past to justify such a cost, Jones, the A&M economist, said.
“The stakes are just a lot higher,” she said. “We’re going to see more corporate farms and larger farms than we have in the past.”
Jerry Schniederjan, an Amarillo real estate agent who sells agricultural land, said most  family farms and ranches were bought by larger family farms and corporate farms. It has become difficult to make a living on a small farm, he said.
Years ago, when land prices were lower  and farms were smaller, Schniederjan and his wife, Shellie, bought a farm. They spent more than two decades growing wheat, grain sorghum and corn in the Panhandle.
They enjoyed raising their boys on the farm, but since neither son has an interest in farming — Ryan is a pathologists’ assistant in Houston, and Kyle is an engineer in Amarillo — the couple decided to sell more than a decade ago.
Like Skinner, Schniederjan, 59, said he had  no regrets.
“Shellie and I felt like we already had our neck stuck out on a chopping block,” he said. “Farming was good to us, but it was a very, very risky business.”
Among the risks was the weather. Rural Texans have always had to endure unpredictable weather, but the year that Schniederjan decided to sell saw little rainfall, and the debilitating drought that still persists in much of the state has pushed many others to leave agriculture. In 2011, the driest year on record in the state, Texas’ cattle inventory fell to its lowest level since the 1960s and has still not recovered.
The drought has been especially hard on ranches, because animals need healthy grass to survive. Dell Dickinson, who raises sheep on 7,000 acres of pasture in West Texas near the Mexican border, said he had cut his sheep herd in half in recent years. But he has managed to keep the business sustainable, said Dickinson, whose grandfather bought the land in 1942.
His grown children — a daughter in Houston and a son in Nebraska — do not want to continue the business, he said, so it is likely they will sell the land once they inherit it.
“Without the emotional attachment, there’s basically only one thing left,” Dickinson, 70, said. “And that’s, ‘Let’s sell it and see how much money we can get for it.’”
In Spearman, Skinner, wearing a blue and gold flannel shirt and jeans, pulls out a framed aerial photograph of the farm from the 1950s.
Through the drizzle is the dilapidated farmhouse, which is in much better shape in the photograph. Gone is the orchard behind the house where the family grew cherries, apples and plums. Skinner’s goats used to keep the weeds at bay, but now they grow waist-high.
Skinner loved experimenting with different varieties of crops, but his problem, he said, was that he never thought of farming as a business, and the market and the weather could not be controlled.
“The bottom line is, it just ain’t no fun anymore,” said Skinner, who said he wanted to live closer to art museums. “You can come out here and listen to meadowlarks, but it might do to trade solitude for a bit of culture.”