MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Don Teague – “(CBS News) CRAWFORD, Texas – It looks like harvest time in Texas, but for fourth-generation farmer Bert Gohlke it’s actually a financial disaster.

‘It hurts, it hurts bad, it hurts real bad,’ Gohlke tells CBS News correspondent Don Teague.

This could have been a great year for Gohlke – corn prices are near record highs. But instead of harvesting his 1,500 acres of corn, Gohlke is chopping it up into a feed called silage – the only salvageable use for a crop destroyed by drought.

‘We should be dealing with 7-and-a-half foot corn right now,’ Gohlke says. But that’s not the case.

His potential losses? More than a quarter of a million dollars – but that’s just a fraction of the $3 billion the historic drought will cost Texas farmers and ranchers.

Two hundred and fifty miles south, Rosalee Coleman is hurting too. A 70-year-old widow, she’s running a cattle ranch on more than a thousand acres by herself.

‘Other than raising three wonderful children, I feel like my greatest achievement has been to hold on to this land,’ Coleman says.

She needs every acre. With no real rain in nine months, she’s been forced to move her cattle from pasture to pasture – just to find grass to sustain them.” Read more.