Sandhills, Nebraska — Go to the edge of nowhere and keep heading toward the middle of it and you will eventually come to the home of Mike and Kayla Wintz, ranchers who live and work deep in the sandhills of western Nebraska. How remote is it?
“A gallon of milk is a little over an hour away,” Mike told CBS News.
Although they are isolated, Mike and Kayla say they have never felt more connected to this great nation, thanks to the blessing of a curse.
In March, the Morrill Fire, the largest wildfire in Nebraska history, burned about 1,000 square miles of ranchland, including the fields that Mike and Kayla lease. The wildfire burned all 11,000 acres of their land.
“Within two hours it’s all gone, it’s tough,” Mike said.
With the grass gone, the cattle couldn’t graze, and Mike and Kayla were in real danger of losing their livelihoods. Other ranchers in the area who might have helped were in the same boat: They didn’t have hay either. But then Mike’s phone started ringing with donations.
So far, Mike says, he has been gifted about $80,000 worth of hay, mostly from anonymous donors.
“They don’t want the glory,” Mike said of the donors.
Added Kayla: “They know they did it and that’s all they need.”
Sara Cover is a volunteer who has been connecting donors with other ranchers in the area who lost all their grass and hay too.
“Up to 200 phone calls a day of people wanting to donate hay,” Cover told CBS News. “… You see these convoys of 20-plus trucks loaded with hay. And there’s school kids cheering them on.”
No one asked for this help. It just came from thousands of farmers, ranchers and truck drivers as far away as South Carolina. Empathy, charity and grace — qualities that guarantee that no matter how isolated you are, you are never alone.
Said Cover: “Every rancher that we have called to send them hay has asked us to send it to their neighbor first.”
