2nd March 2012 – Enid,Oil & Red dirt

Yesterday afternoon I drove to Enid to visit Eisenhower Fellowship holder Hope Pjesky. Enid is a rural city of about 100,000 people. It is situated about 100 miles north of Oklahoma City.

An oil well being drilled on a neighboring property, it costs the
exploration company about $3 mill to drill a well here

The oil boom of the last 8 years has really transformed Enid as it has other parts of Oklahoma. In the USA it is possible to own mineral rights as well as property rights, many farmers have both.  These farmers are able to lease their mineral rights to energy companies to guarantee them the right to be able to drill on the  farmers property.  This can be quite a good source of income. If an oil well is drilled on their property it can generate an even more lucrative income stream for them. The farmers will receive a percentage of the oil income as a revenue stream for the life of the oil well.

I had a chance to look at a few sites around Enid including the amazing Gloss mountains, which looked like something out of Arizona, and one of the original settlers huts, which was made out of sod, because they had no trees on the prairies.

On top of the Gloss Mountains looking East toward Enid

The bright red soil against the whit snow looked quite spectacular

Hope Pjesky and me in front of the last remaining Sod house
 which is now protected inside a large shed

Hope & Ryan Pjesky farm about 26 miles west of Enid, they farm together with Ryans parents and although they are separate financial entities, they essentially work together.

This area of Oklahoma has a highly variable climate, with extremes of drought & floods, they are also prone to tornado's and snow storms. In summer it is not uncommon to have 60 days where the maximum temperature does not drop below 37 deg C and in southern areas of Oklahoma 80days.  In winter the temperature can get down as low as -26 Dec C though when it snows it generally only lasts a day or two.

Some of the Pjesky's newly purchased stocker cattle

The Pjeskys’ mainly use winter wheat as a high protein pasture for their stocker cattle, which they trade throughout the year, aiming to double the weight of  the 110kg animals they purchase. The cattle are fed on the young winter wheat crops from October to March 15^th and are then withdrawn from two thirds. The remaining crop is heavily stocked and eaten out. They maintain that they can get better gross margins every year out of this method  than by taking that portion of  the crop to maturity.