A Conversation about Drought in North Central Idaho

For Idaho, Winter 2025/2026 was the second warmest winter since 1896, with record-low snowpack and warm temperatures that accelerated snowmelt  a month earlier than normal. Nearly all Idaho’s basins were classified within drought conditions.

Ken Bruegeman and Eric Hasselstrom, two farmers & ranchers from North Central Idaho discuss how the drought has affected them just like so many others across the state.

Verbatim:

My name is Ken Bruegeman. We live here in Grangeville, Idaho. We farm wheat and canola and we do hay and we raise cattle.

Eric Hasselstrom, I farm and ranch here in Winchester, Idaho.

(Bruegeman) It's definitely been dry. We had an open, dry winter. The ground water never got replenished because we had, I could only, we had a few inches of snow once or twice all winter. Other than that, it was 40 or 50 and everything greened up earlier. Harvest, we started haying I believe like the 4th or so of June and we were basically done by the 4th of July and a lot of times we don't even start till then and harvest we were actually done by August 1st and usually we don't even start till the August 10th or so and I mean the yields were way down.

(Hasselstrom) Well, for about the last three to five years, it's almost seemed like the climate's been a month off. And it used to be that we always got a lot of rain in June.

And those were always the rains that made our crop was the June rains.

This year what we've seen in these wheat fields is any of the low ground had some stress of too wet early. But then we didn't get any rain late on top of that. For the last three years, that's happened to us every time. We don't get the June rains that really make everything.

(Hasselstrom) And then the heat has been, we've had higher temperatures for longer durations for the last three, four years and that heat on top of no rain, it just seems to just bake this stuff. But this year, the winter wheat, I mean overall is above average

(Bruegeman) There was some protein and quality issues it did do the quality. I think the wheat varieties are getting a little more bred to handle the stress, so the quality was not quite as big of an issue as the past, but the yields were definitely down for our area.

(Hasselstrom) The biggest thing is you get multiple years and then you don't have that deep moisture. And then when it leaves, and another thing is that's tough in this area is if you've got moisture early so the roots get started and they're only feeding in that level of moisture and your deep moisture isn't built back up from the last two or three years, when that goes away and the roots try to take off to go deeper, then there's not moisture there. So you get stranded and it's been tough.

(Bruegeman) Last year was probably not quite as bad which now we're getting to the point where one year seems like things kind of handle it and you're the next year your springs get replenished but some of like the ponds that people have that feed livestock, water troughs and things at different springs they're getting to the point now where they're pretty much done so people are having to haul water or move to different pastures that they never had to before. Usually our pastures pretty much get through the year pretty well, but the last year and this year we're going to be pulling out by September and finding new strategies and weaning at different times since they'll be off the grass and we'll have to feed them hay, so we'll probably wean early and try to get calves sold off. We usually do it in October or November, but now we'll be doing it in probably end of September.

(Hasselstrom) I think there's maybe some other things we need to look at instead of what we've been doing every year for the last. I think there's maybe some other crops and if our climate's changing, we need to adapt to it. Maybe we need to put in more cover crops for grazing and try to make the money on the cattle, you know, and stuff like that. But it's hard to take risk when there's no margin that you're scared to risk and the bankers aren't really wanting to jump around and get more risk with you either.

(Bruegeman) It's just been one of those things where when you start having less bushels to the acre, that adds up pretty quick, but all your inputs and equipment are all higher than they used to be. Diesel's way higher than it used to be, so it's not as easier to bounce back from some of those losses as it would be if your inputs and stuff were lower.

(Hasselstrom) I don't think people understand what repairs, the price of repairs and stuff and fuel, the amount fuels went up. It used to be a repair to the combine was 500 bucks and now when you have a breakdown it's minimum 5,000, 10,000, there's a lot of it's 20,000. You know, trucks, tires, everything else, everything costs three to five times more than it did two years ago.

The cost of inputs is where it's just horrible for agriculture right now and I don't think it's just agriculture.

(Hasselstrom) But what do we always say? There's… be another year.