Too much water

Val and Marta Hammond live in Fremont County and they hope to restore their pasture. David Sparks, Idaho AG. Today we're here. Speaker2: To talk about just one of the problems we face as far as increasing the efficiency of our ranch, as far as being able to increase cattle numbers on pasture. We're just using the dirt that they pushed up and trying to put it back where it was in the first place. We're just trying to restore it as it once was. Speaker3: My grandfather came into this area in 1886. He was one of the first five farmers, and he homesteaded a certain amount of ground down on the Snake River. At that time it was all sagebrush, it was all just dry creek. I've ridden that ground since I was a little tiny girl. It used to be that you could ride a horse all the way across it. It was very, very dry. In his attempt to make it more productive for cattle, he thought that if he just went in and bladed out some ground that the water would fill the ponds and then everything would green. And it did to some extent, except that there was no drainage, so the water would just sit. Speaker2: He thought that by digging holes it would help his pasture. But when you dig up pasture, you lose ground. That's what has happened with this pasture is almost half of the pasture is in ponds. Now, we don't want the ponds because it decreases our efficiency. As far as how many animal units we can put on that ground. Speaker1: How often do you hear a farmer or rancher saying, I've got too much water?