Lex Anteinternet: Trump gives US ranchers the shaft.

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or les...: January 1, 2026. China is imposing a 55% tariff on some (it appears quite a bit of) beef from Brazil, Australia and  the United States. In C...

I'm cross posting this due to Trump's giving ranchers, one are of agriculture where agrarians are hanging on, the shaft.

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 1. The reap what you sow edition.

January 1, 2026.

China is imposing a 55% tariff on some (it appears quite a bit of) beef from Brazil, Australia and  the United States.

In Casper, Vintage Wine and Spirits and Wyoming Rib and Chop are closed as of this morning.

Donald Trump vetoed a water project in Colorado which was passed unanimously by Congress, and which is in a district that is represented by MAGA Lauren Boebert and which voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump mostly, it appears, as an act of revenge on Colorado.

The costs of at least 350 drugs in the U.S. are expected to rise in 2026.

Also, according to Trump Golf Tracker, Donald Trump has golfed 79 days out of 347 days since returning to office (22.8% of the presidency), at a taxpayer cost of  $110,600,000.

The price of oil today is generally $57.41/bbl, below US profitability.  Wyoming oil is generally at $57.84/bbl.

Coal rose to $107.50 /T on December 31, 2025, up 0.80% from the previous day. Over the past month, coal has fallen 0.78%, and is down 13.72% compared to the same time last year.

January 6, 2026

Venezuela takeover has Wyoming oil industry bracing for market changes: Though Wyoming politicos regard Trump's actions as necessary, oil executives do not anticipate immediate windfall.

There's no part of this that will be a positive for the U.S. economy, or Wyoming's.  There's been too much oil on the market now for years, which has made Wyoming's petroleum economy unstable.  More oil will simply make it worse, much worse.   Sinking a bunch of infrastructure into a foreign country will make it worse.

For Wyoming, Is Venezuelan Oil The New Argentinian Beef?

This will be an economic problem, if not a disaster.

And here's another GOP bit of great economic news:

Wyoming spent $2.4M on hunger relief during shutdown emergency: Food insecurity is soaring in the state due to inflation and other factors, food relief experts say.

January 6, 2026

Venezuela and Greenland.

There's a lot of weird war related news circulating today.

Trump claims that the government of Venezuela is going to, well, here:

The U.S. doesn't need millions of gallons of oil to be sold to the US, and further the means by which Trump claims this will happen, he'll control the sales, is legally dubious.

Frankly, I don't believe that this will occur.  Much of what Trump has been saying about Venezuela is a lie and I suspect this is too.

If it isn't a lie, Wyomingites are going to get another dope slap from the demented fool they voted for.  It'll take the price of oil in the state for years.  It's at $46.37, below profitability, right now.

Of course, the goal would be to depress the price of oil, which consumers in most locations want depressed, even though we ought to be weaning ourselves off of oil.  But closer to home, this is another example of why Wyomingites are absolute idiots to vote for the GOP.

The Nobel Peace Prize winning Venezuelan woman who probably ought to be running the country is headed home.  Hopefully she takes over the government, although there's every sign that the Venezuelan socialist party will continue to do so and not much will really change.

Trump, who is demented, is now threatening Greenland.

If we lived in a sane time they'd be taking him out of the Oval Office in a straight jacket, but the Republican Party is now largely bat shit crazy so there's a real chance we'll do this, even while, for the first time, some Republican leaders are dismissing it.

Trump needs to be removed via the 25th Amendment, and like yesterday.

January 8, 2026

Oh we clearly need to add Venezuelan oil to this scenario.

January 9, 2026

Allowing power usage on this scale is simply insane.

Huge Cheyenne Data Center Grows To 2.7 Gigawatts — Nearly Triple State Power Use

January 10, 2026

$350 Million Transmission Project Links Wyoming, South Dakota Power Grids

Broncos Playoff Mania Drives Tickets To More Than $17,000

January 13, 2026

One year in, Trump's economy is a mess

He may have won on a promise to fix everything, but he's only made it worse.

January 19, 2026

Дональд Трамп — агент России, will be imposing tariffs on NATO members over his avarice for Greenland.

Дональд Трамп — агент России.

January 20, 2026

The stock market is collapsing and Treasury bonds are being sold off by the Danish retirement system due to the instability of the American budget.

If this becomes a general trend over the next thirty days the U.S. will go into a recession and the Dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency. 

All this sparked by the demented avarice of the dimwit in the Oval Office.

January 21, 2026

Trump added $2.25 trillion to the national debt in his first year back in (illegitimate) charge.

Laramie County approves construction of what could become the largest data center in US - WyoFile: Project Jade could eventually use the same amount of electricity as produced by 10 nuclear power plants.

January 26, 2026

Natrona County gas prices soar as Iran tensions, sanctions rock oil markets

January 27, 2026

Posted under fair use exception, there's no other good way to illustrate the dollar tanking like this.

Yeah, Trump sure is making us great again.

February 7, 2026

Trump screws American agriculture:

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

1.  Cattle ranchers have played an integral role in United States history, helping to forge an American identity and an American diet with beef as a key staple food.  Today, beef remains vital in the American diet, evidenced by the fact that the United States is the largest consumer of beef by volume, followed closely by China and Brazil.  And the United States ranks second in per capita beef consumption globally.

2.  But in 2022, the United States faced a widespread and severe drought, affecting beef-producing States, such as Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Kansas.  Texas and Kansas, for example, continue to face persistent drought conditions.  The effects of drought are particularly pronounced for livestock producers as many of their operations rely on precipitation to grow forage crops to feed their herds. 

3.  In addition to droughts, wildfires have affected the grasslands of the western United States, including America’s cattle-producing States.  Apart from the direct threat of burns and burn-associated deaths to cattle, cattle ranchers have had to adapt to indirect effects of wildfires, including changes in grazing patterns, loss of feed supplies, and suboptimal animal health for those cattle surviving the wildfires.

4.  Given the demand for beef, certain United States cattle farmers and ranchers supplement their herds, specifically their feedlot stocks, with cattle (calves) imported from Mexican ranchers.  But following new detections of the New World screwworm in Mexico in May 2025, the Department of Agriculture Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service, in conjunction with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), restricted the importation of live animal commodities from or transiting through Mexico, further limiting domestic feedlot stock supplies.

5.  These factors have combined to result in the United States cattle herd contracting to record lows.  As of July 2025, the United States cattle inventory totaled 94.2 million head, including 28.7 million beef cows.  This is one percent lower than the United States cattle inventory surveyed in July 2023, continuing the downward trend of cattle inventory in the United States.

6.  The abovementioned factors have also cumulatively resulted in higher beef prices for United States consumers, including for ground beef.  Since January 2021, ground beef prices have continued to rise, reaching an average of $6.69 per pound in December 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the highest since the Department of Labor started tracking beef prices in the 1980s.

7.  Despite the increased prices and the availability of more affordable protein alternatives, United States consumers’ demand for beef remains strong.  The United States imported a record high amount of beef in 2024, reaching 4.64 billion pounds, a more than 24 percent increase in beef imports since 2023.  Among the beef products the United States imports are lean trimmings, which are blended with fattier domestic trimmings to produce ground beef products, such as hamburgers.

8.  The Secretary of Agriculture has monitored the domestic supply of beef products subject to a tariff-rate quota (TRQ), including lean beef trimmings falling under Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) statistical reporting numbers 0201.30.5085 and 0202.30.5085, and noted the domestic supply of such products and substitutable products combined with the estimated imports of such products under the United States beef import TRQ.  The Secretary of Agriculture also advised on related domestic demand and pricing.

9.  As President of the United States, I have a responsibility to ensure that hard-working Americans can afford to feed themselves and their families.  After considering the information provided to me by the Secretary of Agriculture, among other relevant information, I am taking action to temporarily increase the quantity of in-quota imports of lean beef trimmings under the United States beef TRQ to increase the supply of ground beef for United States consumers.

10.  Section 404 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) (Public Law 103-465, 108 Stat. 4809, 4959-61 (19 U.S.C. 3601)) authorizes the President, in certain circumstances, to modify TRQs on certain agricultural products.  In particular, section 404(b) of the URAA (19 U.S.C. 3601(b)) provides that where imports of an agricultural product are subject to a TRQ, and where the President determines and proclaims that the supply of the same or directly competitive or substitutable agricultural product will be inadequate, because of a natural disaster, disease, or major national market disruption, to meet domestic demand at reasonable prices, the President may temporarily increase the quantity of imports of the agricultural product that is subject to the in-quota rate of duty established under the TRQ.  And section 404(d)(3) of the URAA (19 U.S.C. 3601(d)(3)) provides that the President may allocate the in-quota quantity of a TRQ for any agricultural product among supplying countries or customs areas and may modify any allocation as determined appropriate by the President.

11.  After considering the information provided to me by the Secretary of Agriculture, among other relevant information, I find that imports of lean beef trimmings into the United States are currently subject to the United States TRQ for beef and determine that the supply of lean beef trimmings or directly competitive or substitutable agricultural products will be inadequate to meet domestic demand at reasonable prices because of a natural disaster and major national market disruption.  Accordingly, I determine that it is necessary and appropriate to temporarily increase the quantity of imports of lean beef trimmings subject to the in-quota rate of duty established under the beef TRQ.  In addition, I determine that it is appropriate to allocate all of the increased in-quota quantity of beef, as established by this proclamation, to Argentina.

12.  Section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended (19 U.S.C. 2483), authorizes the President to embody in the HTSUS the substance of statutes affecting import treatment, and actions thereunder, including the removal, modification, continuance, or imposition of any rate of duty or other import restriction.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 404 of the URAA, section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended, and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, do hereby proclaim as follows:

(1)  For calendar year 2026, the aggregate in-quota quantity for certain products described in Additional U.S. Note 3 of Chapter 2 of the HTSUS will be increased by 80,000 metric tons (mt).  

(2)  The additional 80,000 mt described in clause (1) of this proclamation will apply only to lean beef trimmings classifiable under HTSUS statistical reporting numbers 0201.30.5085 and 0202.30.5085. 

(3)  The additional 80,000 mt described in clauses (1) and (2) of this proclamation will be administered on a first-come, first-served basis in four quarterly tranches.  The first tranche of 20,000 mt will open on February 13, 2026, and close on March 31, 2026.  The second tranche of 20,000 mt will open on April 1, 2026, and close on June 30, 2026.  The third tranche of 20,000 mt will open on July 1, 2026, and close on September 30, 2026.  The fourth tranche of 20,000 mt will open on October 1, 2026, and close on December 31, 2026.

(4)  The additional 80,000 mt described in clauses (1) and (2) of this proclamation is allocated in its entirety to Argentina.

(5)(a)  To establish the TRQ amendments described in this proclamation, the HTSUS is modified as set forth in the Annex to this proclamation.

(b)  The United States Trade Representative (Trade Representative), in consultation with CBP, shall determine whether any additional modifications to the HTSUS are necessary to effectuate this proclamation and shall make such modifications to the HTSUS through notice in the Federal Register, including any technical correction to the Annex to this proclamation.

(6)  The Secretary of Agriculture shall continue to monitor the domestic supply of lean beef trimmings, as the Secretary considers appropriate, and shall advise me on the domestic supply of lean beef trimmings or directly competitive or substitutable products, combined with the estimated imports of such products under the TRQ as adjusted by this proclamation, and how such availability relates to domestic demand at reasonable prices.  The Secretary of Agriculture, in consultation with the Trade Representative, shall inform me of any circumstances that, in the Secretary’s opinion, might indicate the need for further action and shall recommend to me any additional action I should take, if necessary.

(7)  Each executive department and agency (agency) is authorized to and shall take all appropriate measures within its authority to implement this proclamation.  The head of each agency may, consistent with applicable law, including section 301 of title 3, United States Code, redelegate any of these functions within their respective agency.

(8)  Any provision of previous proclamations and Executive Orders that is inconsistent with the actions taken in this proclamation is superseded to the extent of such inconsistency.  If any provision of this proclamation or the application of any provision to any individual or circumstance is held to be invalid, the remainder of this proclamation and the application of its provisions to any other individuals or circumstances shall not be affected.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this

sixth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fiftieth.

                               DONALD J. TRUMP

Well that not only hurts Wyoming, it directly hurts me.

Well this will be fun at the next gathering "are you surprised that Trump. . . "

And something to remember:

Tom Lubnau: This Session, A Failed Budget Shuts Wyoming Down

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 13. Disassociation.

Labels: 119th Congress, 2020s, 2025, Chuck Gray, Coal, Economics, Government, Health Care, Petroleum, Populism, Republican Party, Taxes, Unions, Wyoming, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

First set of Labels: 2020s, 2026, Agriculture, Australia, Brazil, China, Donald Trump, Food, restaurants and bars, Taxes, The Second Trump Administration, United States, Wyoming, Wyoming (Casper)

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Agriculture, Argentina, Cattle, Donald Trump, Greenland, Petroleum, Stock Market, The Second Trump Administration, War, Wyoming, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

 

Organic increasingly more profitable for WY farmers

Lex Anteinternet: Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat: An open call to Greenlanders, and musings.

Lex Anteinternet: Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat: An open call to Greenl...:   An interesting blog entry by a native Montanan. Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat An open call to Greenlanders I note this in part because she...

Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat: An open call to Greenlanders, and musings.

 

An interesting blog entry by a native Montanan.

Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat

An open call to Greenlanders

I note this in part because she's a nature writer, and native Montanas are close to nature, like native Wyomingites.

Indeed, I've tended to find since Donald Trump reared his New York overfunded balding head that real Trump backers in my home state either lack education, or tend to be imports.  I know part of that is a really harsh judgement, but I don't find too many natives, in any demographic, who are fire breathing Trumpites who are exceptions to this rule.  There are, I'd note, educated Trumpites here, for sure, but they tend to be imports.  

I think people know what the unrestrained wealth and exploitation mean to Wyoming, and that helps explain it.  Wyomingites are, if they are real Wyomingites, conservative/libertarians but not populists really.  

Imports who move here, however, including some who claim to be us, or want to be us, often are Southern Populists at heart.  Indeed, a couple of years ago I was out in the sticks and saw a giant Stars and Bars flying above somebody's camp tent, something that, when I was young, would stood a good chance of having been ripped down by any native passing by.  

I've written a lot about how we got here.  The question now, is how we get out. We'll be getting out, one way or another.  The question is, however, whether a rational conservatism can emerge that's free of the horrific elements that Trump has interjected into what's passing for conservatism now, or whether it will pass the way the way that French conservatism did after Vichy.  I think, frankly, the latter is more likely.

If conservatism can survive Trump, which frankly I very much doubt, when it reemerges it's going to have to rebuild a lot nationally and internationally that Trump and his minions have utterly destroyed.  More likely, however, what will emerge after this era is a renewed liberalism countered only by a somewhat middle of the road liberalism.  Again, France provides the model.  After the Second World War the French Third Republic was dominated by the hard left, including a very powerful communist party, countered only really by a centrist to liberal centrist Catholic party.  The French right died. 

I suspect that's the country's political future, in a way.  Starting in 2026 the Democrats will regain the House and, if Trump is still in power, provide a block to an outraged and increasingly insane Trump.  By 2028, the Senate is likely to go Democratic too, assuming it doesn't in 2026.  The White House will have a legitimate President following the 2029 election who will almost certainly be a Democrat.

That President, whether he's Republican or Democrat, and who won't be J. D. Vance or Marco Rubio, is going to have a big task in front of him.  Part of that will be to repair the international damage done by Trump. 

Not all of it will be capable of being repaired.  A western world that had depended upon the U.S. to be the world leader of Western ideals will never, and I mean never, trust the U.S. again.

But the U.S. will also be much diminished in the Western Hemisphere, in spite of what Trump, Vance, and Rubio think.  In South American a new block will emerge, likely with former major rivals Argentina and Chile as the leadership, but with Brazil, a massive country in extent and population, more significant than the U.S.  Canada will be regarded as a serious, educated, intelligent nation by the Europeans.  The U.S. will still have weight in the world, but in the way that France or the United Kingdom do now, save for Asia where the U.S. will still be a major presence.  We will have been forced to look to the Pacific, as so many in the past have urged us to do in the past, by Trump and the Republican party soiling our relationships with our intellectual home.  

Basically, we will have been the kid that left home, got into drugs, and embarrassed everyone. We'll be the Hunter Biden of Western nations.

Domestically, we're going to have a lot of repairs to do.  A new President will quietly accept much of what Trump has done in immigration.  The damage done to trade economics will likely have repaired by them, the tariffs having by then settled into an economic background as part of a new system which will not generate all that much in income but which countries are by then used to.  Businesses won't come back to the U.S. due to them, and the Rust Belt dreamers will have gone on to despair.  The Agricultural sector will be barely reviving, I'd guess, from a Trump induced economic collapse by that time.

The U.S. will return to environmental and conservation sanity and begin to try to make up lost ground and lost damage, in part because its role in the world will have been so decreased that it will have no choice.  Fools who insisted that we had to grab Venezuelan oil as China was going to will wake up and find that China will, by 2028, be using largely electric, not gasoline, vehicles. Europe won't be far behind, and a U.S. auto industry that will wish to sell will have advanced in this direction, with U.S. consumers, less enamored with a 19th Century economy than Donald Trump, will have as well.

If Trump's "Travis, you're a year too late" petrol pipe dreams will have achieved little, and they will, perhaps a revival of nuclear power might actually make a difference.  Like many of Trump's policies, or those who used Trump to gain position, that policy on the margin of his larger policies, would be beneficial.  The pipedreams about coal and oil, however, will go nowhere and already are going nowhere.  Indeed, Wyoming's coal fortunes, so desperately pinned on Trump, are going nowhere at all, and the price of oil in the state is down in the disastrous levels.

In larger things, people sometimes ponder the existential "problem of evil", that being why does God allow bad things to occur.  A common answer is that God does not allow it unless a greater good can come out of it.  While I don't want to go so far as to claim to detect a Devine hand at work here, I wonder if a bit if we're going to see something like that occur.

The country that comes out of Trump Drunk in 2028 with a bad hangover is going to be a much lesser nation.  Maybe that's a good thing, particularly of Europe, where we derived our culture from, revives to claim a larger place.  We'll need to get used to being told what we will do, and like a bratty teenager, which we've proven ourselves to be, we'll have to get used to that.  Our Evangelical Puritanism which most Americans assume is Christianity will have taken a sharp hit.  Our botching foreign wars will end as nobody will really trust us much as a solo actor.  Nations that need alliances, and many do, will look to us only in concert with others, which will make them safer. Taiwan and South Korea will look to Japan, and perhaps to Australia. Europe will look to ourselves.  Nobody will care one wit about us, and we'll have to look, pleadingly, to everyone else.  Our environmental destructivism will start to come to an end.  Our cultural imperialism will come to an end, as nobody will admire a country that could produce such vile characters as Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, or Jeffrey Epstein.  Our absolute lust for the wealthy, that came in with Ronald Reagan, who looks less and less like a hero, will come to an end as well as we have to face a Republican ramped up budget crisis the only way we can, taxes, and taxes on the wealthy.

Not all of Trump's legacy, including the tiny positive portions of it, or the negative massive aspects of it, will go away.  Trump has destroyed the post World War Two United States.  But the country itself will survive, and rebuild, and probably be better than it was before.  

Perhaps the U.S. can get back to being the U.S.

Oh, and Greenland will be independent. Americans won't really be welcomed there.  The U.S. military won't be there.

Out of time and place.

 

Churches of the West: Unsettling news for Catholics in Rock Springs.

Churches of the West: Unsettling news for Catholics in Rock Springs.: This comes as bit of a shock, as well as evidence of how slow news actually travels in our current age in which everything seems flash drive...

Unsettling news for Catholics in Rock Springs.

This comes as bit of a shock, as well as evidence of how slow news actually travels in our current age in which everything seems flash driven:

Historic Rock Springs Church Faces Closure After A Century Of Worship

Giving some credit to the news, I'll note that this hit smaller news venues earlier, which I guess leads me to wonder a bit about how well Natrona County is served by the media.

Anyhow. . . 

The church is this one:

Sts. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church, Rock Springs Wyoming

 

 

This Romanesque church was built in 1912 after a protracted period of time in which efforts were made to build a church specifically for the Catholic Slavic population of Rock Springs, which was quite pronounced at the time. The church was named after brothers Cyril and Methodius who had been the evangelists to the Slavs.  The first pastor was Austrian born Father Anton Schiffrer who was suited to the task given his knowledge of Slavic languages.

The news broke just before the celebration of the church's 100th anniversary, which isn't great timing, but no doubt that was simply coincidental.

To my surprise, there are three Catholic churches in Rock Springs.  I was aware of there being two. The Catholic community seems to be served there in the same way the community in Casper is, as a Tri Parish, rather than three separate parishes.

 Here's the announcement that was given by the Diocese:

Not too surprisingly, there has been some local opposition and the Bishop has suspended his order until February, when he will meet with the aggrieved parties.  The suspension is on line, but I was not able to download it, in order to post it.  

I'm not terribly optimistic, but the potential closure has drawn opposition from secular quarters as well:

Watch List: Saints Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church, Rock Springs

In terms of timing, another interesting aspect of this is that it comes right as the Catholic parish in Rock Springs started undertaking an effort to build a community center for the parish, the brochure for which is partially set out here:

There's more to the brochure than that, but I can't think of something more likely to put a damper on this effort than to close a century old church while its ongoing.

I'd also note that one of the stated desires is exactly the opposite of what brought Sts. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church about in the first place, that being the desire to "create unity and one Catholic identity".  That's a common, and admirable, goal but in the real world, people don't like it.  Individual ethnicities within the Catholic Church have always struggled against this, sometimes with pretty disastrous results.  Indeed, Orthodoxy in the US got a big boost just from such an event when Bishop John Ireland disapproved of Eastern Catholicism remaining separate, causing Fr. Alexis Toth to lead a group of them into the Russian Orthodox Church.  In  the early 20th Century Catholic Diocese often responded just the way that the Diocese of Cheyenne did here, by simply creating additional churches that recognized the different identifies.

That won't happen here, and these are all Latin Rite churches.  Moreover, the strong ethnic identities in Rock Springs from a century ago have no doubt dissipated considerably.  But that doesn't mean that parishioners in a unique Church, or really any Church, like to have their church closed and be told they need to go elsewhere, even if it makes sense, which it very well might, given the antiquity of the building.  Doing it while also undergoing a campaign that expresses the goal of unity is more than a little unfortunate.

Indeed, that's the case as even in this modern age, not everyone likes to be grouped into one big group.  I'm one of those people.  The Diocese here had an event several years ago where all the local Masses were cancelled so that one huge Mass could be held at Casper's David Street Station. Rather than do that, I drove to Glenrock and attended Mass there. . . and I noticed some other Casperites I recognized there as well.

Dreams denied and abandoned.

I've seen this place from the side of the road quite a few times, although its in a remote location.  It wasn't until earlier this fall that I realized that it's all on Federal Land.

I walked in, as you have to do, while hunting doves.  I only saw one.

It's a full homestead.  Barns, outbuildings, and a substantial house. This is very unusual as a lot of work went into this, but for some reason, it wasn't proved up.  I'll have to see if I can figure out the history of it. So far I've had no luck.

It was well thought out, and sheltered. A substantial hay field, on Federal Land, worked by the current leaseholder remains. What's really surprising, however, is the house.  It was very well built. So much so, that for a time I debated it if was a school, but it was better built than rural schools by quite some margin, and frankly larger.  It's a house.

Usually, although not always, when you walk up on an abandoned homestead, they're on private, not Federal, land.  And that makes sense.  It only took five years to prove up a homestead, and proving it up was one of the first things the people eligible to do so did.  It protected their investment, which was substantial, both in terms of time and labor, but moreover in actual cash outlays, which were actually quite a bit more extensive than people imagine.

The peak year for homesteading was 1913, during which 11,000,000 acres were claimed.  I"m a bit surprised by that, as I thought it was 1914.  World War One caused a massive boom in homesteading which was aided by the weather.  A lot of people took up dry land farming in that period, following the naive popular assertion of the time that "rain follows the plow.

Abandoned wagon.

It doesn't.

A large part of what inspired homesteading entries at the time was the Great War. With Imperial Russia off of the farming export market, which was a huge portion of its GNP at the time, and with European farming massively impacted by the war, grain production, beef production, and horse production turned to the United  States, Canada, and Australia.

Trouble began to set in after the war, although interestingly not immediately so.  1919 was the last year that American farmers had economic parity with those who lived in municipalities.  That started changing soon thereafter, however, and its never reversed.  The Agricultural Depression of the 1920s set in early in the 1920s, and basically carried on until the Great Depression hit in 1929.  Having said that, people continued to attempt to file homestead entries, some people naively believing that if they couldn't make it in town, they could as a farmer or rancher.

The buildings on this spread, however, are too nice to be a late homestead entry.  I've seen a few comparable ones that were abandoned, but they were all earlier homesteads in which the owners became over extended and couldn't make their bank payments during the Great Depression.  A lot of money went into some houses and whatnot while things were going well.  That must have been the case here. So what happened?

That is, at least right now, impossible for me to say.  But what seems clear is that a lot of money went into this spread during good times, and the owners pulled out when hard times hit.  That, and the fact that the abandoned equipment is horse, not vehicle, drawn would suggest that the homesteaders were doing okay during World War One but didn't weather the change in the economic climate of the Agricultural Depression of the 1920s.  If I had my guess, this was probably a World War One vintage homestead which collapsed, after a huge investment of time, effort and money, soon after the war.

They didn't last long enough in order to prove up.

Their dreams must have been crushed.  I hope, and pray, that the rest of their lives went well.  

I'd also note that, more than ever before, when I see places like this I have a maudlin tinge of regret.  My dream was something like this too.  At age 62, I won't make it.