Wildfires devastated parts of the plains states in March, but in addition to taking supplies to families in need, Mid-Missouri volunteers have turned to art created with the skeletal remains of burned-out cattle fences to raise money for relief efforts.
Last week, Chance Sommerer; his wife, Emily Sommerer; his twin brother, Lance Sommerer; and Lance's girlfriend, Layken Wilbers, demonstrated how at a family farm.
Chance said they're not full-time farmers. They raise quarter horses - their "dad's hobby" - and help their grandfather raise cattle, his hobby. The destruction in Kansas and other bordering states in March from fires still hit home for him, though.
"I just put myself in their shoes. If I had lost that much," it would be nice to know there are people out there who cared enough to help, he explained.
Weather, climatic and ecological conditions on the plains left the area as tinder waiting for ignition, and set in motion what would become a disaster this year.
Crops and grassland were on the rebound last year after a five-year drought that ended in 2015. Ranchers let the grass take time to recover in order to avoid overgrazing as their cattle herds rebounded. The thicker grass provided extra fuel for fires this year, however.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explained in March, a hot and dry spell settled over western Kansas, the Oklahoma Panhandle, northern Texas and southeastern Colorado, on the heels of a warmer-than-average winter. These conditions combined with the thick, dried-out grass and gusty winds to let wildfires race across the flat landscape with record ferocity.
The March fires burned some 2,100 square miles, or 2 million acres. Seven people died. More than 20,000 heads of cattle and pigs were killed outright or had to be put down later because of the extent of their injuries. $55 million worth of fences were damaged or destroyed. Barns and homes burned to the ground, too.
The state of Texas alone estimated total damages cost its farmers and ranchers in excess of $25 million. The fires in Kansas were the largest in that state's recorded history, and burned more than 400,000 acres in just one county.
As a comparison to a wild grass fire's intensity and what it does to barbed wire fences, a very hot oven can reach a temperature of 500 degrees Fahrenheit - about two times that of what it takes to boil water.
Twice as hot, steel softens at 538 degrees Celsius, or about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Even hotter, a wild grass fire produces temperatures of between 1,500-1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Fire Management Systems Laboratory of the University of Toronto.
While temperatures about four times hotter than an oven's maximum are still about 1,000 degrees less than what it takes to actually melt steel or iron, a wild grass fire's flames are still more than ferocious enough to incinerate wooden posts and compromise the structural integrity of those metals.
"I think fire ages it that much faster," Chance described the burned-out wire. He said it's brittle and rust-covered from the heat and accelerated oxidation.
Getting the barbed ball rolling is the trickiest part of making a wire "tumble weed," which is what they call the round spheres they've made from wire rolls collected by relief convoys as they've returned to Mid-Missouri. On their second and previous trip, six junk rolls were brought back, and new ones will be delivered in exchange on the third trip this week.
"Once you get the original form, it goes pretty quick," he described as he made a rough sphere on the ground of a horse pasture with a few loops of the junk wire. "The more wire you add, the better it looks," he said as he rolled the ball forward like a snowball gathering more mass.
He said they've made a 7-foot-tall snowman design, plus cross and flower designs too, in addition to about 35 tumbleweeds so far.
"I'm by no way, shape or form an artist," he said of his newly adopted craft. "We'll call it beginner's luck."
Each piece sells for $55 - the cost of one new roll of barbed wire to help replace the cattle fences that were destroyed.
"We've basically just been making them to fill orders," he said, "chasing our tails on it" trying to keep up with over 60 orders.
He said the idea for the barbed wire art as a relief fundraiser came from Jimmy Zumwalt, of Belle.
Zumwalt explained that rolling up barbed wire for storage is nothing new. On one occasion, his wife looked at a rolled-up spool and wanted one for her flower bed.
After the second relief trip to Kansas, he and his wife were drinking coffee one morning, when she reminded him she wanted some barbed wire.
He got to thinking about all the junk wire he had seen in Kansas he could have grabbed for her, and then the strands started to connect in his mind. "This is it. We can roll these balls up, charge $55, and it's a barbed wire exchange," he said of his epiphany.
"Since we started the idea, there's people making them in Oklahoma and Michigan," and they're selling them too, he said. "It's not just us; we just came up with the idea."
"We've already sent two checks to Kansas, directly to the farms where the wire came from."
The two checks have meant help for two ranches, and he explained each ranch can have multiple families on it. "It affects a lot of people."
He said a lot of families there lost their homes in the fires, too.
"It feels good. They needed it. It wasn't really even a thought," he said of the efforts of making multiple trips with relief convoys.
Not including what they've got organized for the third trip leaving Friday, he said between the first two trips in March and April and the 57 trucks and trailers in total have been involved, the relief convoys from Mid-Missouri have taken 9,000 fence posts, 100,000 pounds of protein and mineral and some 700 bales of hay.
This week's trip, which will include donated supplies from Unilever and Clorox will be the last one of the summer, he said. He added volunteers may go back to Kansas in the fall to help ranchers build fences, but "they're getting back on their feet" and don't need as much material aid anymore.
If anything, the barbed wire exchange through art was a way to help ranchers help themselves.
"They've also blizzards and tornadoes and everything else (to face). They're tough people. It's easy to help them" because they were never looking for a hand out, just a way to get themselves back on their feet, he said.
Chance Sommerer has also been part of the relief convoys. "It's nice to help someone else out" when the Lord has blessed their own family, he said.
He said people interested in buying a tumble weed or other barbed wire design can contact Zumwalt or himself through Facebook.