Hollowing Out the Middle:  The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America.
Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas.  Beacon Press. ISBN: 978-0-8070-4238-0

By Eric Melvin Reed, Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture

In order to research “Middle America,” Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas moved to Iowa and conducted a case study of one town. “Ellis,” Iowa, faces many of the same problems as other small towns in rural America. Generations ago, when agriculture relied on big families and lots of workers, these towns flourished. Today, due to distinct changes in agriculture (namely the consolidation of farms, the implementation of new technologies, etc.), these towns are dying. Hollowing Out the Middle is not about economics. It’s about the consequences of rural America’s declining economy: Small town America is dying because young people are leaving-and they aren’t packing up and leaving just for jobs.
In Ellis, the authors observe four types of young people: “Achievers” (the brightest, most talented students who leave permanently for schools and opportunities in the cities), “seekers,” (the worldly types who leave in search of something beyond the countryside); “returners” (mostly disillusioned achievers and seekers); and “stayers” (youth who generally forego college, take blue collar jobs right out of high school, get married, and try their best to avoid serious problems). As sociologists, Carr and Kefalas resist the urge to stereotype, but as observers they remain distinct outsiders. No one will accuse them of falling in love with their subjects. Carr and Kefalas put forth the obligatory lines about the Heartland mattering, but the way they describe it, the nation might be better off without rural America: “To be sure,” Carr and Kefalas write, “Ellis is not the easiest place to be if you are a foreigner, gay, not Christian, not white, and obviously rich or poor” (14). However, the most disturbing trend in the book is the description of how implicit rural residents are in their own demise. They, more than anyone else, encourage their best and brightest to leave. Carr and Kefalas do offer some suggestions, but if the rural brain drain is to be fixed, rural Americans will want to solve many of their problems themselves.

Life After The Range

By Gavin Jager and Eric Melvin Reed

When people hear the word “mustang” they often think of cars. Ford Motor Company’s signature sports vehicle has been an American classic for decades.

But what about the true mustang? The wild horse running across the plains is an equally evocative symbol of the American spirit. Undomesticated equine herds still run the range in ten western states: California, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Arizona.

The number of mustangs roaming the open plains is about 36,000 – down from about two million a century ago. Hemmed in by fences and no longer free to roam an endless frontier, today’s herds have to be limited if they are to survive. When they become overpopulated – usually due to drought or overgrazing – the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) steps in. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 mandates the Bureau of Land Management to round up a small percentage of overpopulated herds so the rest can live happily on the range. Once the horses are captured, they are fed, checked for fitness and health, and prepared for adoption in the “civilized” world.

In December, the Bureau announced plans to carry out what will probably be the biggest roundup of wild mustangs and burros ever on federal land. As many as 25,000 horses will be relocated to facilities like those at the Wild Horse and Burro Center in Elm Creek, Neb. The Elm Creek Center is just one of twelve facilities in the United States where wild horses are brought in from the west to be checked, vaccinated, and prepared for adoption.

Joe Stratton, facilities manager at the Elm Creek Center, has worked for the Bureau of Land Management for the past 18 years. Since 1998, he has helped prepare captured horses for adoption. He spoke with Saddle Up Nebraska about bringing wild horses into the state.

What kinds of horses are run at the Wild Horse and Burro corrals in Elm Creek?

There isn’t just one kind of horse, but all sorts of horses that exhibit traits of those turned out by the local ranching community before the Wild Horse and Bureau Act was passed.

Why is it necessary to provide for wild horses?

The Wild Horse and Bureau Act mandated that we manage wild horses on the range at appropriate levels to reach a natural ecological balance. The BLM is what is called a multiple use agency, which means we are required to use the land for the good of the public through mining, livestock ranching, wilderness protection, exploration, and oil well development. With all these different uses on the federal lands, there becomes an excess number of wild horses. We take them off and put them in our facilities so we can either adopt them out or take care of them for the rest of their lives on long-term pastures. It’s a balancing act between trying to protect the range and leaving wild and roaming horses free.

How are the horses caught?

Primarily, they are rounded up with helicopters. Most of the places where wild horses exist are open range; there aren¹t any pens. We hire contractors to set up temporary traps. The horses are herded into the traps using helicopters. From that point, they are taken to a local holding facility where they are sorted by age and sex. They are then transported to a BLM holding facility where they are prepped for adoption.

How are the horses prepped when they come off the range?

The first thing that happens is they have to start eating domestic hays and domestic feed, which are almost foreign substances to them. Most horses take to the hay relatively quickly, but there is a change in their stomach bacteria.

After they are put in a pen, blood tests are conducted for interstate shipping, including the Cogan’s test. Then they get vaccinated for the normal equine diseases. We continue the process of getting them ready to enter the adoption program. The horses also have to get over the stress of the gathering operation – it’s a big change for them to be in pens with waterers and hay feeders. Some of the horses have to be taught that it¹s OK to go up to a waterer or a hay bunk.

What is the program’s main goal?

Ultimately, we want to have healthy, happy horses, which means keeping them in balance with their food and water sources, whatever their population level is. Whether the number is 100 or 1,000, there needs to be enough resources for them to survive without destroying the range vegetation and range environment. This has to be done in conjunction with wildlife species and endangered species that live there.

How can someone adopt one of these horses?

Anyone interested in adopting the horses needs to fill out the paper work and show they have large enough corrals. The corrals have to be six feet high for adults and five feet high for a younger animal. They need to be made of pipe panels and planks and have a shelter. Once people are approved they can pick their horse and take it home. For a year, the horse is still property of the government. Owners have to prove they can take care of the horse and then, after a year, they can title the horse and it becomes private property.

How many horses are kept at the Elm Creek, Neb. facility?

Our population restrictions are set by the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality. We keep 499 horses; this is the maximum that we are permitted to keep. If the entire program becomes full there are two options.

One is to stop catching. Another is to hold more horses in a feedlot, or get long-term pasture contracts and create more space to turn out the horses we already have.

What are some of the problems BLM runs into?

The wild horses are reproducing a lot faster than we can find homes for them in our adoption program. We catch or remove in the neighborhood of 7,000 to 9,000 a year. Wild horses reproduce and grow at about twenty percent a year.

The current population is about 36,000. We actually want there to be 26,000.

If we want to maintain 36,000 we have to adopt out or place in long term holding pastures 7,200 horses a year.

Is there anything else you would like readers to know?

One of the things we would like to tell people is that we are not trying to destroy the wild horse herds. They are an initial part of the public land.

Our goal is to manage the horses long-term. We are mandated by congress. We aren’t trying to cut or reduce the herds to nothing. We are trying to manage them for a sustainable population and protect the resources of the West.

Jeannette Walls. Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel.
Scribner. Oct. 2009. 272p. ISBN 978-1-4165-8628-9.

By Eric Melvin Reed, Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture

The term “true-life novel” sounds like an oxymoron. If a book-length story is true then it’s nonfiction; if it’s based on people and events from history but established in the imagination, it’s historical fiction. In Half Broke Horses, Jeanette Walls has written a genre-bending “true-life novel” of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Born in a dugout on the “hard country” of west Texas and taught to break horses at an early age, Smith is raised to believe the most important lesson in life is learning how to fall.

Everything on the family homestead – from the flash floods to the tornados – supports Smith’s belief in a dangerous world. At the incredibly young age of five she finds herself running the ranch with her father, a philosopher and an eccentric with a temper. But with the ranch destined to be inherited by her younger brother, she feels pulled toward teaching and the city.

During a stint in Chicago, Smith is tricked into marrying a “crumb-bum” two-timing salesman. She returns to the Southwest, and there meets her second (and last) husband. Jim Smith is a man who matches his wife’s vitality and resourcefulness. The couple begin their life running a filling station on Route 66; before long they are managing a 100,000 acre ranch.
Half Broke Horses is about finding one’s “Purpose.” Good guys and bad guys proliferate the novel, but the eminent conflict is internal. Smith is a poker playing, gun carrying, survivor with a passion for flying airplanes; the peace and familiarity of the country never quite negate her fascination with technology and modernity.

A half broke horse of a different kind enters the novel in the form of Smith’s daughter. Rose Mary Smith (Walls’s mother) is a high-spirited beauty who refuses to accept her mother’s creeds about learning to fall and preparing for the worst. Reading Half Broke Horses, one senses the things that feel made up are probably the most true. The author has plucked some of the most salient moments of one person’s life joyous as well as tragic – and collected them into a series of first-person sequences that speak to others.