SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Last summer, we visited farms and ranches across South Dakota impacted by extreme drought. Nine months later, very little has changed.

Kevin Van Zandbergen is relatively new to ranching.

“The old boys tell me the second year’s the hardest,” Tripp County rancher Kevin Van Zandbergen said.

The Tripp County rancher spent a majority of last summer looking to the sky for rain.

“We turned really dry in the spring and we were fortunate enough living down here where we do that we were able to irrigate some of our ground and put up some hay and get enough feed for this past winter,” Van Zandbergen said.

Across the White River in Lyman County, Quint Garnos is cutting it close this spring when it comes to hay bales.

“My dad counts them every day,” Lyman County rancher Quint Garnos said.

The Garnos family has a couple hundred head of cattle, and take in another 400, across 12,000 acres of land.

“What’s ironic, we have some old hay left and it was flooded on the river bottom south of Vivian and that was three years ago it was up that high and now look in just three years,” Garnos said.

This spring, the river and stock dams remain low, the landscape is brown, and the road to recovery is a long one.

“This year appears to be that we’ll be in the same weather pattern and we will do as much as we can. We’ll need rain,” Van Zandbergen said.

“Inch of rain a couple times a week for awhile, or for sure once a week,” Garnos said.

Even when that day arrives, this drought will find its way into the record books.

“There was one in the late ’70s, I believe, and one in the ’80s but this is as bad as those I think,” Garnos said.

“It won’t be for nothing, there’s always blessings that come through the work that we do but it will be more challenging,” Van Zandbergen said.

But, the lack of rain hasn’t dampened Van Zandbergen’s opinion of ranching.

“I wouldn’t pick any other lifestyle,” Van Zandbergen said.

Garnos says he got five or six inches of rain last fall, but the lack of snow during the winter put him right back where he started when it comes to the drought.