The Franks run about 1,000 cow-calf pairs on pastures around southwestern North Dakota and into South Dakota — some of the areas hardest hit by the 2017 drought.
Farmers and ranchers in parts of the Dakotas and Montana regarded the 2017 drought to be among the worst droughts in recent memory.
However, the U.S. Drought Monitor released May 17 had almost 90 percent of North Dakota in at least abnormally dry conditions, with areas to the west in moderate drought and a small band of severe drought in the north central area, which makes up 5.5 percent of the state.
Last year, the drought was worst in southern and western North Dakota.
The second week in May brought half an inch of rain to the area.
For Frank and other farmers and ranchers in many parts of the region, it’s too soon to say that the drought is over.
Even if the area receives normal precipitation, there’s still a "hangover effect" from last year, which will make timely rains all the more important.
"As soon as we go two weeks without (moisture), you’ll notice very quickly that the grass may remain green but there’s no growth," Schlag says, noting that already is happening in the area north of Highway 200 in North Dakota.
Frank doesn’t expect to run out of hay.
Schlag says southern North Dakota, the area that fared the worst in last year’s drought, has caught the most rain so far this season.

The risk that fracking can contaminate water supplies and cause other harm has been well documented, from Wyoming to Pennsylvania.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation’s only permanent nuclear waste repository, is located 2,150 feet underground.
The state and the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 3 million acres and thousands of wells in southeast New Mexico, require three layers of steel and cement casing around wells to prevent ruptures in porous limestone.
Drilling through the limestone requires fresh water to prevent contamination of drinking water.
But drilling through salt requires brine, because fresh water would dissolve the salt formations and would make wells structurally unstable.
Either way, drilling unearths massive quantities of fluid known as “produced water” that must be drained from the wells.
About half is treated and recycled, and the other half injected into 721 wastewater wells meant for permanent disposal of the fluid.
Fracking the wells to release the oil requires more water — 34 million gallons for a single well just under 2 miles deep, according to the state.
The state Oil Conservation Division documented almost 800 surface spills or leaks last year in the two counties — Eddy and Lea — where most of the fracking occurs.
New Mexico officials say they are confident that regulations and an ample number of inspectors can prevent such contamination.

Like a lot of farmers and ranchers who coped with severe drought in 2017, John Weinand is praying for rain.
“One year is not so bad.
Most people can get by on one year,” said Weinand, who farms near Beulah and is past president of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association.
“It does have a significant impact because our economy is so strongly rooted in agriculture,” said Julie Ellingson, executive vice president of the North Dakota Stockmen’s Association.
Because of the severity of the drought in 2017 and the low amount of moisture the state has received this winter, Ellingson said producers are concerned about another dry year.
Ranchers are taking steps to prepare, such as assessing their feed resource base and planning to allow pasture lands a longer recovery time this spring before turning out cattle, Ellingson said.
The National Weather Service’s drought outlook through May 31 predicts that drought will persist in north central and northwest North Dakota.
Producers discussed strategies for finding crop success during a drought and grazing strategies for pastures stressed by last summer’s dry weather.
Ranchers will continue to benefit from drought disaster livestock water supply projects the State Water Commission has helped fund.
The agency has made $2 million available in matching funds for producers in drought-stricken areas to pay for new wells, hookups to water pipelines and other projects.

"Conditions here are unique," said Ed Martin, assistant commissioner in the New Mexico State Land Office, which manages nearly 2 million acres of state land for energy production.
And the process generates huge amounts of liquid waste that must be transported for disposal or recycling.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation’s only permanent nuclear waste repository, is located 2,150 feet underground.
The state and the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 3 million acres and thousands of wells in southeast New Mexico, require three layers of steel and cement casing around wells to prevent ruptures in porous limestone.
Either way, drilling unearths massive quantities of fluid known as "produced water" that must be drained from the wells.
Fracking the wells to release the oil requires more water — 34 million gallons for a single well just under 2 miles deep, according to the state.
Studies conducted by the federal Bureau of Land Management show that oil and toxic materials from a big spill or leak could move quickly and contaminate thousands of acres of underground aquifers that supply the region’s drinking water.
The potential for significant damage is ever-present.
For decades, oil field services companies poured millions of gallons of freshwater into the ground to dissolve a thick salt layer and produce brine long used in drilling operations.
A decade ago, two of those collapsed, forming a pair of giant desert craters 22 miles and 29 miles northeast of Carlsbad, the heart of the state’s oil operations.

Lesser amounts (0.6 to 1.0 inch) dampened the central Appalachians, the Tennessee Valley, portions of the northern Intermountain West and southern Rockies, and most other sections of California outside the interior valleys and arid southeastern areas.
Dryness and drought expanded in some areas receiving relatively small rainfall totals, specifically portions of Florida outside the Panhandle, southeastern Georgia, and the northern and southeastern reaches of South Carolina.
South Dryness remained at bay across the Lower Mississippi Valley and southeastern Great Plains, although only light precipitation at best fell on western sections of the region.
Little or no precipitation fell on the remaining areas of dryness and drought in the Middle Mississippi Valley.
Drought intensity was degraded in many areas, with Exceptional Drought (D4) introduced in a patch of northern Oklahoma east of the Panhandle.
Extreme (D3) drought now covers a large swath across northeastern New Mexico, most of the Panhandle and adjacent areas in Texas, western Oklahoma, south-central and southwestern Kansas, and southeastern Colorado.
According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, a large proportion of the winter wheat crop in several states is in poor or very poor condition, including 74 percent of the crop in New Mexico, 72 percent in Oklahoma, 53 percent in both Kansas and Texas, and 27 percent in Colorado.
West Outside the patches of moderate precipitation in California and adjacent Oregon, it was a dry week, with more than 0.5 inch of precipitation restricted to parts of Arizona and far southern Nevada.
Elsewhere, generally moderate precipitation (0.5 to 1.5 inches) is expected across western Oregon and in broad area covering the southern Appalachians, central Gulf Coast States, Middle Mississippi Valley, central Plains, and central and northern Rockies.
Abnormally warm weather is favored in southern Florida, the west half of the Gulf Coast, most of Texas, the southern High Plains, and the southern Rockies.

In June 2017, five graduate students in the School of Architecture’s Landscape Architecture program spent a month travelling along the Dakota Access Pipeline, exploring its impact on local communities and the environment.
In 2016, thousands of activists and Native American groups gathered at a camp near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota to protest the construction of this pipeline.
The Standing Rock Sioux and other native tribes raised concerns that the underground pipeline would pass through sacred burial grounds.
Furthermore, it would travel underneath the Missouri River, the primary drinking water source for the Standing Rock Sioux.
Inspired by the Standing Rock protests and the interplay between land and politics, Abbas, Casstevens, Harris, Turett and Walker received funding from the School of Architecture’s Benjamin C. Howland Traveling Fellowship to travel to, research and document the landscape surrounding the pipeline.
“We just felt like it really needed this other lens that we felt like we had the capacity to give it.” The five students began their trip and spent most of their time in North Dakota and then followed the pipeline through South Dakota and Iowa.
Throughout these different places, the group also looked at physical aspects of the pipeline, including its width, depth and materials used in its construction.
Their drawings in the exhibit show both the broad landscapes of the areas that they travelled to as well as close-up details such as the plants and soil.
In January 2017, NASU and the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition (VSEC), formerly the Climate Action Society, organized a protest in which over 100 students, faculty and community members demonstrated against the Dakota Access Pipeline and several others.
Fourth-year College student and NASU member Evelyn Immonen values the architecture exhibit for its inclusion of multiple perspectives and the importance placed on firsthand experience.

According to the Drought Monitor, 96.92 percent of the state is considered to be in some degree of drought classification.
A small area of extreme northwest North Dakota and another small portion of southwest North Dakota are listed as being in severe drought.
“The area of severe drought in the western Dakotas was changed to long-term drought as the impacts are limited to lingering groundwater and long-term precipitation deficits,” says the Drought Monitor.
North Dakota state climatologist Adnan Akyuz recently stated that drought conditions could continue well into 2018.
Much of the state, particularly in the west, endured increasingly dry drought conditions throughout 2017.
The recent soil moisture report from the state Agriculture Department cited a lack of both topsoil and subsoil moisture over more than half the state.
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With .64 inches falling in the Bismarck and Mandan areas in the past week, rain totals for the year have accumulated to 13.03 inches, according to Weather Underground. Average rainfall year to date is 15.27 inches.
• Areas of moderate drought dropped from 87.35 percent to 62.85 percent.
• Severe drought saw a decrease from 32.87 percent to 23.49 percent.
• Areas of extreme drought, located in the northwest corner of North Dakota, moved slightly from 3.46 percent to 3.36 percent.
That percentage has dropped since July 30, when North Dakota led the nation among major production states in very poor to poor ratings for rangeland and pastures at 78 percent and barley at 29 percent, according to data provided by the Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin.

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But some North Dakota growers are trying to end a state cloud-seeding program that’s been around for generations, believing it may be making the drought worse.
In response to the push, Republican Gov. Doug Burgum has asked the state Water Commission to review the program.
Hank Bodner, a cloud-seeding supporter who chairs the state’s Atmospheric Resource Board and the Ward County Weather Modification Authority, said opponents have no scientific basis for their doubts.
"We’ve told them that if we’re going to have a meeting to discuss this, you need to come with someone who has a PhD to tell us that we’re chasing the clouds away," Bodner said.
While Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have been battering the Gulf Coast and Southeast with wind and water, the northern Plains have received little more than dust all summer.
The silver iodide causes water droplets in the clouds to form ice crystals that become heavier and fall faster, releasing rain and small hailstones — rather than larger stones that could batter crops.
"Statistics aren’t always as good as we want because every cloud is different," Delene said.
Neil Brackin, president of Weather Modification, Inc., the Fargo company that does the aerial seeding, said he doesn’t believe cloud-seeding is making the drought worse.

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BISMARCK — The severity of the drought lessened considerably during the past week as rain helped to mitigate dry conditions throughout North Dakota, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor.
However, nearly the entire state remains abnormally dry, and the severest category, exceptional drought, increased slightly from .39 percent to .41 percent in the northwest corner of the state as compared to last week.
Extreme drought dropped from 18.89 percent of the state to 3.46 percent. Areas in moderate drought decreased from 92.98 percent to 87.35 percent.
Though some greening is occurring with more to come as rain is forecasted throughout the weekend, NDSU Extension has pointed out that pastures have been used heavily this summer and cattle producers are continuing to look for forage options to get them through the fall.
Thirty-one North Dakota counties are eligible for the Livestock Forage Disaster Program and 16 counties are eligible for the maximum allowed of five months of forage losses.
Chances of rain are 20 percent on Friday and increase to 60 percent on Saturday and Sunday, according to the National Weather Service in Bismarck.