“…The heat of that year broke all records. One day it hit 115 degrees…and the wind blew
with a callous edge. It would come in hard from the southwest, and then shift, pick up in intensity, and
then barrel in again from the north…and it sucked the life out of anything it touched. One thing that did
grow, however, was Russian thistle.
Another name for tumbleweed, Russian thistle blew against barbed-wire fences, forming a barrier that
trapped blowing dust. The children hauled the tumbleweeds away from the fence and stacked them in the
cow lot for winter feed…Feeding tumbleweeds to cattle–it was a frontier in American agriculture, but not
the one prophesied by the government.”
~Tim Egan, taken from the novel, “The Worst Hard Time”
Although it seems inconceivable, tumbleweeds became a food-source not only for livestock, but for some struggling families as well during the last half of the Dustbowl. To survive, the poorest of the poor soaked this wretched plant in brine and salt to make it edible. With milk, meat and eggs out of the question, Russian Thistle was just about the only thing some families could count on as plentiful.
Endless fields of Russian Thistle, Liberal, KS
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