In Terry County, hard-working farmers and stock farmers made the land productive despite its reputation as "The Great American Desert" when rainfall was adequate. Farm families, like early ranchers, often lived in covered wagons and dugouts until houses could be built, collected dried cow chips for fuel, and dug water wells. Wives and children shared the chores when the men were away, women also serving as nurses and midwives, and boys as young as ten guarded herds at night against cattle rustlers and wolves. In 1902 Uncle Joe Hamilton, one of the first stock farmers in Terry County, worked the land with mules and horses while often battling blinding sandstorms. Farms supplied corn meal, dried beans, fresh and canned fruits and vegetables, meat from cattle and swine, milk, butter, chickens, turkeys, and eggs, while corn also fed the animals. Neighbors joined together for harvests and livestock butchering, and sorghum and cotton became important crops; with the building of cotton gins, cotton became the major cash crop. The 1930s Dust Bowl sent rolling clouds of dust across the plains and destroyed tender crops with biting sand, leading farmers to adopt conservation farming, use deep-breaking plows to mix clay with sandy topsoil, and expand irrigation from the Ogallala Aquifer.