PADUCAH - Her 1,000 acre dairy farm is all Lesa Clark knows. "This is what I enjoy. I can't imagine life without farming," Clark said.
But earlier this summer, she came close to selling it all because the drought nearly dried up her ambition to keep going.
"This has been one of the most stressful years for me," she said.
And it's been stressful on her 300 cows, too. The nutritional feed she normally gives them became a victim of the heat, so she's having to supplement that by paying out of pocket for additional food. "If we don't feed them and they don't have the right nutrition, they are not going to reproduce," Clark said.
Clark doesn't expect any funds from the federal government, either. She does have crop insurance, but there's no dairy insurance to cover the costs she's had to pay to keep her cows healthy. "No one is going to help us. This is out of pocket for us - just to we can survive," Clark told Local 6.
It's not just her corn that's hurting. Clark can typically squeeze out about 10 gallons of milk per cow a day, but they're only producing around seven now. As a fifth generation farmer, she knows the weather dictates her bottom line and she's hoping for a turnaround soon.
"I always look at the possibility that next year is going to be a great year."
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