The Driest of the Dry

Hocker Farms has been in the Mission Valley since 1927, through good times and bad, through droughts and lush seasons. But to Bill Hocker, who worked the land for over 50 years, he has never seen a drought like the one this season.

“It’s the hottest, driest summer I’ve seen,” he said. “Never like this year. It’s a record year.”

Hocker and his wife Phyllis, have been married for 65 years – in fact, just last week they celebrated their anniversary. They met on a middle school bus and are still together to this day. They’ve witnessed the ups and downs of living on a farm throughout the years, but this year is different.

“We’ve seen a lot,” they both said.

Bill Hocker’s mother and father bought the 380-acre farm from the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribal allotment in 1927 from a bank. Hocker has since turned the farming operations over to his son in 2002, but he still helps out on occasion. He is 91 years old, and his long days in the field are behind him, but he still maintains an interest with the inner workings of the farm.

“I help the tractors work,” he said. “I put about 260 hours in during the spring.”

Even still, Hocker and his wife still live in the house they build long ago, which sits surrounded by trees and a well-kept yard. Originally, the farm was much bigger, but the family sold some land during the Great Depression to keep the farm.

Hocker’s farm and long experience is a prime example of what many farmers and irrigators in Mission Valley are going through this year with the drought.

Not to mention this year’s new development: the Water Compact between the CSKT and the state of Montana, which was approved in April by Legislature and is in the process of being ratified by Congress.

It’s safe to say that the water compact is a controversial subject, especially to farmers and irrigators such as Hocker.

Hocker Farms grows mainly grain and hay to this day, but in the past they raised livestock.

“We got out of cattle in 1948,” he said.

The farm does irrigate potatoes well into August.

Located in the area between Ronan and Pablo, off Old Hwy. 93, the farm stretches wide below the house and runs a half-mile tract of land between its borders.

Watering such a wide stretch of land for crops is an engineering feat in and of itself, as many farmers and irrigators will attest, including Hocker.

Over the years, he has used water distribution in a variety of ways. The farm still uses different systems to deliver water to areas growing grain and hay.

Hocker said they started with ditch irrigation, hand line sprinklers, and pivot wheels. Hocker said the most difficult system used was moving 40 ft. sections of pipe one part at a time.

Hocker’s family raises interesting concerns regarding the CSKT water compact. While it’s easy to find irrigators who are completely against it, Hocker’s opinion is that it is much more complicated than what most people think. He’s wary of the CSKT taking over the water for the land, for many reasons. Nature and by extension, the unusual weather have much to do with the lack of water, he said.

“Snowpack has a lot to do with it,” he said.

He believes the water issue should still be in the hands of the Flathead Joint Board of Control for the Mission, Jocko, and Flathead Irrigation Districts (FJBC).

“[The Flathead Indian Reservation] should have stayed with the joint board,” he said. “But they got into a ruckus and didn’t agree on a lot.”

In April of this year, the FJBC, which represented most of the irrigators in Mission Valley, debated the compact at the Montana State Capitol, which would settle disputes between CSKT water rights and layout exactly how much water would be available to farmers and irrigators in the future. The issue has been debated and debated for over 30 years -- to the CSKT, the issue has been debated since the 1855 Hellgate Treaty.

Irrigators who oppose the water compact say it gives too much control to the CSKT both on the reservation and off-reservation land. Supporters for the water compact say it once and for all settles decade-long disputes and legal battles, which are costly to all parties involved, including the CSKT government and the state and federal governments.

In June, after signing the water compact into law, Gov. Bullock visited Tribal Council chambers and held at “ceremonial signing” with members of the council, including Tribal Chairman Vernon Finley.

Bullock spoke then of the hard work and long negotiations hopefully coming to an end with the bill becoming a law ratified by Congress. “The majority of our legislators, the attorney general, Sen. Vincent, the tribe, and so many of the on-the-ground irrigators recognize this is a square deal. We just need to get this done.”

For Finley and the CSKT government, he said then that he was grateful for the Governor’s visit and it personified the result of many, many years of negotiations. Long enough for generations to pass who worked on the deal. However, as he said then, the U.S. government and the CSKT government differ in their views of the value of the water, regardless of the compromise.

“For tribal folks,” Finley said at the signing, “For the elders, it was to protect the water. The water goes in a cycle. When the water comes on to their land, at least make sure it leaves just as clean as it came in – that’s protecting the water.”

For “on-the-ground” irrigators, such as Hocker, protection of the water is not as important as protecting the land – land he that he owns and makes a living off of producing crops and supporting the family, as his son now does.

“The [CSKT] shouldn’t control the water,” he said. “The irrigators should control it.” He said many tribal members are not irrigators, but there is certainly a population of them, but he thinks it is smaller than non-tribal members. Again, he states that when the irrigators had control, they often disagreed.

Hocker’s concern is echoed by many irrigators – essentially that the CSKT will limit the amount of water used during the spring and summer seasons. Some have even gone as far as to suggest that the water compact is “insidious,” as Bob Fanning did last week during a meeting with ranchers in St. Ignatius.

“Water is being shut off,” he said. “It’s never been shut off.”

Hocker, however, due to his long history living in Mission Valley, he attributes the lack of water to natural reasons: the unusually warm spring and the current drought.

“It’s not the tribes’ fault there is less water this year,” he said. Added to this, he said, there are plenty of irrigators who believe the CSKT will work with the irrigators and provide fair use, as it has been in the past. This year is different because the reservoirs are very low in reserves. There may be a question of mismanagement, he said, but overall the water is simply running out.

Overhearing this, Hocker’s wife Phyllis, voiced a concern that many irrigators probably share in one form or another: “It’s scary as heck.”

Phyllis had stronger opinions about the water compact, but more from a personal standpoint.

“We don’t feel like we are represented from a state and local level,” she said.

Hocker can look back on the years before any water disputes and still recall droughts and water shortages – a fact of life he considers part of farming.

“We’ve had good years and we’ve had years when we didn’t make a damn thing,” he said. “That’s the way farming is. It is not always fun.”

As for now, his son who runs the Hocker Farm, is using ditch water to irrigate crops, as well as wells on the property. Although the drought is hurting many farmers in the valley, such as his son, he doesn’t think there will be crop failure.

Water compact aside, Hocker said he never had many dealings with the tribal members but is friends with them.

“I’ve never had any problems with the Indians,” he said. “There’s hope. I don’t think anything is ruined.”

Hocker, in his 91 years of experience, and being a farmer since the Depression, has hope for the future, but it is uncertain at this point. They don’t plan on selling the farm anytime soon.

The drought has caused many people to question the future, especially if it concerns their livelihoods. The weather, he said, is still a large factor in farming. He keeps a sense of humor concerning the weather and the drought.

“Whenever they don’t know what the hell weather is going to do, they call it El Nino,” he said and laughed.

All in all, Bill and Phyllis Hocker have lived long full lives in Mission Valley and have the stories and history to back up their beliefs. Life will go on, even in uncertainty. For Bill, he relies on a simple philosophy – both in life and farming:

“Take what you get, and put up with it.”