Episode 27: Lee Wells | We're Here , A Documentary of the West Texas Fires

This week on The Ranch and Table Podcast, Lee discusses the devastating effects of wildfires in the Texas Panhandle, highlighting the resilience and community support of ranchers affected by the disaster. He also emphasizes the ongoing efforts to provide aid and support, including a documentary project to capture their stories.

Transcript

  Welcome to the ranch and table podcast,  where we discuss all things related to our Texas ranch and  our ranch to table restaurant located in downtown Rockwall.  I'm your host, Lee Wells.  Hello and welcome to another episode of the ranch and table podcast. I'm Lee Wells, and I am so glad you've joined me today.

Today's episode is brought to you by my friends at Sterling Tea. And Rockwell has one of the greatest tea companies in the world. They bring in tea from all over the world, China, India, Egypt,  and bring it all together, blend it,  send it out and have over 200 tea blends servicing.  Hundreds of restaurants, businesses throughout the United States.

And if you will go to sterlingtea. com and put in on your order, Wells 20. Wells two zero, you'll get 20 percent off today. Just for being a listener and putting that code in. And so please do that. So they know you came from us. And today I have a very special podcast. I have been working. I don't know if you've been keeping up or maybe on Facebook or just watching, but we have been very busy.

I've been very busy in the panhandle. I've done a.  A podcast about it a couple of weeks ago. And since March 1st, we have been working on getting hay and feed and supplies to those in the wildfire zone up there in the panhandle. And thanks to everyone who's helped. I know that there's more than I can mention.

There's more than I can.  Start calling names right now. And I don't want to do that and leave someone out. But I have been amazed at the amount of help. I've been amazed at the people who have helped. And to tell you the truth, I've been amazed at some that haven't helped. And so that's just being honest.

It seems like some of the deepest pockets are the hardest to get into. And I don't understand that, but I am so thankful for every donation, every 5 donation, every 10 donation. We are up over 92, 000 raised in this month of work. And I couldn't be more pleased with our partners and those that have helped us.

So thank you. If you want to help us continue, that's going to be on our website at leewellsofficial. com and then click on the wildfire relief page and you can see how much help we've sent, how much feed, how much hay, how much money we've raised and what all's going on there. We have events we have t shirts.

It has just become a big thing. And today I want to tell you.  About one of the cool projects that we have going on. It's going to. include a documentary that some of you may have heard of, maybe you haven't. And so our documentary that we're putting together is come from an idea that I had one night late.

I was just trying to get ready for bed and this idea hit me. And I began to message and connect with people to try to make it happen. And a couple of days later, we were, I was taking a load of feed out to the panhandle and took with me a videographer set of cameras whole back seat of my truck full of equipment.

And we get out there and ended up with seven interviews in two days. Five of those interviews were with ranchers who had lost everything or some version of everything. And just mind blowing what has gone on. The effective area  is about 90 miles wide and about 30 miles deep. That's almost 2 million acres.

If you go out to the Oklahoma side and go across the Oklahoma line and Into their panhandle it, it gets bigger than that. So it's over 2 million acres of destroyed land, destroyed fences. People lost their wells because of their solar panels and the tanks that hold the water, all of that was burned up and destroyed.

Their fences are gone. And I talked to several ranchers out there that  have just miles and miles of fence. These ranches are so large. There's one guy that said he probably has an estimated 55 miles of fence between his perimeter and cross fences. One of the smaller ranches that I spoke with and interviewed, he said his perimeter fence was right at eight miles.

Around the edge of his ranch. And of course that's all destroyed, not counting cross fences and other fencing. So those are big numbers. And now we're in a phase where we are going out and. And helping rebuild fence. I had a great call today with a, an organization called reach out worldwide.

If you remember the fast and furious movies with Paul Walker,  Paul, before he passed, had built this organization to go out and,  help help tornado victims and hurricanes. And they've been to Maui twice and deployed out there to help make a difference in those fires and that fire. I had a call with them today.

They're going to get involved. They're going to find donations for fencing material. They're going to organize teams and go out and their initial goal is to build five miles of fence. And then we'll look at it, come back and do some cool things together. There are, if you go to leewellsofficial.

com and go to the page there for the wildfire relief, you'll see everything that we've done. If you caught my podcast last week, it was with Tay Lewis the voice contestant who came into town, did a concert, did a podcast. We raised some money that night, a lot of awareness, a lot of morale. A lot of volunteers signed up to help.

So if you want to get involved in this effort, it's not going away anytime soon. They're not going to be out of their mess anytime soon. They have still today's April 1st. And so you'll see this in a couple of days. They still, to this point have not gotten any measurable rain in the last month at all.

It's hard to imagine that it's raining right now. As I'm recording this I hope it doesn't come through the thunderstorm that's going on out here right now I hope it doesn't bleed through into the mics, but it is what it is but out there they've still not received any measurable rainfall. So No grass growth.

It's still just burn over fields and sandy blowing sand. And they have a lot of work yet to do, and we're going to go continue helping feed helping with hay, helping with fences,  just anything we can do to make a difference  on the topic of the documentary.  We have a trailer and I'm going to show you that trailer here in just a few minutes on this podcast.

And you're going to hear the stories of a few men and ladies who lost all of their pasture. Most all of their fencing. You're going to hear of one man in particular who has had two men in particular had to shoot their own cattle because of their injuries. It just, it's just more than any of us.

In the more populated areas could really imagine I run cattle. I have a ranch as And it's real hard to get the concept of what they've been through. It's i've talked to them. I've heard them i've cried with them. i've interviewed them. I've called them back on the phone and had conversations These are some amazing folks.

I can call them up on the phone and we'll talk 10 15 30 minutes like we've Been lifetime friends. It's they're just amazing people and I've not met a bad person out there yet And so if you want to get involved you want to help there's plenty of places to do that, of course Monetarily, it will give us the ability to continue helping tonight.

I made a phone call or this afternoon. I made a phone call there's a man who's been running hay from his drop location since the fires You  He has made numerous trips a day, every day of the week. He's not taking a day off. And I messaged him and I said, Hey what do you need? He said, I don't need anything. 

I said, yeah, you do. I said what do you need? What can I do for you?  And that, they just didn't want to have any help. They just didn't want to ask for anything. They don't want charity. This is a guy that grew up out there. He's a hometown guy. He's just helping his neighbor.

And I said no. Tell me something. I want to do something for you.  And he said if you have to ask, I had new tires on my truck on the first, before all this started and I started hauling hay. He said, I had a new tire in my tires are bald already. Can you imagine that? That his tires are balled in one month. 

That many miles, that many tanks of gas, that many loads of hay.  I said, send me the tire size. And I contacted a friend of mine over here in cattle mills that runs a tire shop. I said, do you have these tires? And he said, I can get those tires by Wednesday.  I said, give me a deal on them. However you want to do it.

Let's figure it out. We've got trucks going to the panhandle this week. We'll get it on a truck. We'll get him a new set of tires. It's the least we can do. It's the least that I can do. I'm real thankful that I've been able to coordinate and get things done from here. And I'm not having to go out and. 

Make this happen every day myself. And these guys are making it possible to move this hay that we're sending. And so it's the least that we can do to help them get through what they're doing. And if they have needs, somebody contacted another guy this week And paid his water bill at his place for the week or for the month and put a card on file and another called and covered their monthly expenses for I guess their lease or their payments for four months.

Just good things happening. And if you want to be involved in that, if You want to send 5. If you want to send a hundred dollars, if you've got a thousand dollars to send it Lee Wells for at Venmo, send it to me. You can go to leewellsofficial. com and click over on that page and you can send it.

To landmark fellowship 501 c3. If you've got a larger donation, I suggest doing it that way If you want to send a check, message me i'll send you my address. You can send it to the restaurant 206 north fannin street rockwall 75087 send it to wells cattle  Attention Lee Wells, I'll get it, open it, put it in the right account, we'll get it done.

This problem isn't going away anytime soon. And I want you to take a minute, six and a half minutes is how long it is, and I want to play you Our trailer that we have produced. And when you're through watching this, I want you to, I want you to stay tuned and I want to talk to you for a couple of minutes afterwards, and I want you to listen to this as we play it.

Now,  this is the heartland of America,  the backbone of the American beef economy.  We're  here.  The wildfires burn out of control in the Texas panhandle. It's 

Viewers may find these images disturbing.  The wildfires took everything we had. I see the destruction and the devastation everywhere. Thousands of livestock have been lost and hundreds of homes and other structures decimated.  I've never seen a fire like this. Lots of cattle lost. All of this place burned.

With well over a million acres turned to ash. It got so big and the wind got so high that  It scattered everybody out. The flames were probably 15 feet tall. Oh my gosh. Probably the meanest fire I've ever fought. It looked like somebody throwing big old red balls. Just throwing them out there. Didn't land out there and light off again.

You fought what you could, where you could. You can knock it out and whenever you're not paying attention it circle around behind you and cover you up. Surrounded by flames, authorities tonight saying there are no exits out. We had no air support. I don't know where the air support was. We can't hold it.

Get out of there. Let's roll out. We got too many spots. You were on your own. This hay hauler said he'd went out north of Canadian to deliver hay and went to this old man's house and He had 450 mama cows and he said, sir, how many bales of hay is it going to take to get you through? And he said, son, I don't need any hay.

He said, I've got one cow left. Can you imagine? 

A lot of cattle died in the fire. It came so hard so fast. Most of them weren't able to get away from it. Most of them die of smoke inhalation. They'll run and run from it until they can't. And they just die of smoke inhalation. You can follow the fire line and see they'll all start.

giving up at the same time and they'll just start scattering, They'll be in a line where they're starting to give up or they'll get to a corner and it'll all catch them in the corner I've never seen so many dead cattle  dead animals 5, 000 10, 000 it's really hard to say right now But it's gonna be pretty dramatic a lot of the cattle were already bloated and in burnt and dead But then I had cattle that didn't have hair, didn't have the ears, lips, eyelids, all burn off.

And they were still walking and coming to the feed truck. And that's that's the hard part of ranching, having to get out with your rifle and shoot your own cattle. I had nightmares for weeks. I have a really good friend of mine that called me one day and said, I'm done.  I don't want to do it anymore,  but it has to be done.

And it was the first round of it for my boys, and it didn't take them long to get sick of it. People here have a lot of grit and a lot of fight in them.  You can see it in their eyes, behind their smile. They're tired of looking at it, they're tired of talking about it,  and they're tired of thinking about it.

A  lot of the ranchers are getting up there in age. I'm 93 last December. At that age, would you?  I've never thought about quitting  or giving up. Cows need fed or  they need looked after. I always have a reason to get up the next morning. I think everybody needs something to get up for the next day. 

As of today, all the fires are out, but that means work begins. It's going to take months to years to get back on our feet. This was my living, and it's  These are our friends and neighbors. If we don't help, who will? You feel bad for people driving six hours with a load of hay. Cause they've got family they, they need to be with.

That is hard. It's really hard.  I had a guy from Decatur, Texas come in. He got here around 9. 30 that morning and we unloaded and he said I'll see you, I'll see you this evening. And I said, you what now? He said, I'm driving back to Decatur, Texas and getting another load and I'll be back this evening.

And I thought, how amazing somebody would do that. If we don't, who will? Because they're not coming for us. We gotta take care of ourselves. When it came to my place, I'd help my neighbors till I had to leave.  And it was me and one guy at my house. Todd Keith, if 

it wasn't for him, I'd have lost it. everything I had. We got to stick together. This is what ranchers do. This is what farmers do. This is what Texas does. Neighbors helping neighbors. It's just unbelievable.  But that only goes so far. When it's gone,  we have to sell everything we have. And if we don't have cattle out here, we can't feed the world.

This world lives on what we raise. There is lots of good people out there. I found that out. I was really down on humanity. I thought, this world is going downhill. But after this, there's more good that's came out of this and then the bad.  We  just can't give in. We can't let up. I've had losses,  but my heart's broke more for my neighbors  than it is me. 

I think I'm going to need new tires on the truck before I can come back. But if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. This fire has been one of the. The  worst things that I've ever experienced in nature  and the  kindness  of people is some of the best I've ever seen in human account. My neighbor came to me  and said, I'm here to help you.

And I said, get out of here. This fire is bad. He said, I got it and crawled on the front of my truck. And he said, you didn't leave me. I'm not leaving you. We're here. 

I don't really know how  that hits  different people, but I can tell you, I have watched that many times now through various versions and recuts since we've been working on it. I was sitting in  Every one of those interviews that you just witnessed, I was the one asking the questions behind the camera and having the conversation that you see on the camera with those guys and ladies, and I tell you as many times as I've seen it, I still can't get over it.

I still, it still hits me in the chest. And it still chokes me up every time I see it because this isn't a story of make believe. This isn't a story someone wrote and scripted and we have actors acting. These are real lives. They're real livelihoods.  They're real people trying to figure out how in the world they're going to make it. 

And I'm not sure I can get this all on camera or not, but my buddy Kevin,  he took the first trip out. And he went out there and I don't know that I've told the podcast audience, the story I'll tell you real quick. I've told it a lot, but I don't know if I've told it to you. If I have, forgive me, but he went out, took a load of feed and Hey, he was the one that went out first.

He said, Lee, I got to go. We got to help these people.  And he's the one that got me involved in all of this. He took that first load out and he dropped this load off with a gentleman who had just a couple of days ahead of that, had a nervous breakdown and  had didn't know how he was going to make it.

Lost everything. Just had a few cows left and we brought him some hay. Kevin did and got him some feed and he was so happy. It was first time he had smiled in, in, in a week or a few days at least. And  still didn't know how he's going to make it through, but that made a difference for him. And then Kevin ended up staying all night, loading out truckload after truckload of hay.

As they were getting this hay out to these cattle that were starving these cattle that had nothing to eat And had just barely escaped with their lives And that started something in me that has not died. It's not quit. It's not even It's not even settled down yet, to be honest with you. And so I don't know why I feel so called to this other than these are my rancher friends  that most of them I've never will meet.

These are my rancher  coworkers or cohorts or colleagues. And my heart goes out to their loss. It goes out to their lives. That I have been wrecked by this fire. Thank you for taking a moment with me today. I've got some really cool things happening. I've got meetings this week with producers in Hollywood.

I've got meetings coming up with a fundraising and foundations. If you know of a foundation, a charitable foundation that would help with the arts and help perhaps give some money towards this project. Again, it's 501c3. It would it would be easy to make the transaction happen. We need significant money.

We need probably a hundred thousand dollars to produce this documentary all the way  through to an hour and a half length, a standard length of a full documentary. And so  I don't know that we'll get a lot of the standard funding because of the subject matter. Because of the government not stepping in and helping because of the situation surrounding it being dicey but i'm just going to tell the story of these men and women their triumphant spirit you can tell that even though they're walking through the darkest day of their life They have hope they have determination And they still care about their neighbor more than themselves and I believe that is a Message worthy of getting out across our nation, especially in an election year when there's so much drama and silliness going on in our world, there's so much drama on social media.

We fuss and fight and tangle up over the silliest little things. I just don't have patience for it. I just don't care I don't care who's in the white house. I don't care About fuel prices today. I don't care about all the things people get all wound up about I'm, just real thankful that I can do something to help somebody I'm, real thankful for the health and the wellness and the well being of my family the business is doing well and those that I care about are doing well and those in my life.

And so really and truly i'm thankful i'm more thankful than I am disturbed about The craziness and if we really wanted to take a minute and dissect it  i've talked to the governor i've talked to his people I've talked to the people in charge of the ag commissioner and various ones And they all pretty much have told me the same thing.

Just keep doing what you're doing Don't get bound up in politics. Don't get caught up in red tape. Just keep doing what you're doing. You're making a difference. And I am through you, we are together making a difference. And again, I don't know that politics or that government positions hold as much power as we think they do.

I don't think that they do. I don't think they can do the things that we want them to do. Sometimes they're pretty much figureheads who have appearances who show up and and make proclamations. They give condolences. They ask that others act and get involved and they try to use their platform, a lot of them for good, or at least I think that they are here, but I don't know that they can really do what I'm doing and what you're doing and what we're doing together.

I don't think that they have that Liberty. And so I'm going to continue using that Liberty to. Do the things that need to be done. And I thank you for getting involved in helping. If you can again, 5 Lee Wells for on Venmo, send 10 bucks send a hundred dollars. It's not going to hurt you to give something.

And so do that. And I'll put that directly to the things that we're working on directly to feed and hay going out. We've had to cover some guys fuel because they've. They're young guys. A lot of them, they're not working because they're taking these loads out of hay or feed for us. And so we're covering their fuel.

That's 800 to a thousand dollars a trip, depending on how heavy the load is and what truck they're driving. Sometimes 14, 1500, if it's an 18 wheeler taking these trips out there. So we're spending money to get this done. And I just thank you for helping. I thank you for caring. I hope that you were touched by this trailer and I hope you help us connect us with the right people that, that could get us farther down the road.

Today's been brought to you by Sterling tea and our friends who do such a great job, such professionals. And then of course, I always want to mention it's fake creamery. They're a friend of ours as well. And it's fate. Creamery is the best ice cream you'll ever eat in fate, Texas. And if you want to go in there, they have a discount as well for 20 percent off.

And so just tell them that you heard about them on the ranch and table. And so I'm going to say good night and I'm going to say good. Good luck and all that stuff. But I want you to think about what I've said. And would you say a prayer of direction for me that I could continue to lead some hope and do some work that's a significant and meaningful in this situation?

Thanks again for listening to the. Ranch and table podcast. Have a great day.