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How Much We Appreciate the Rain.

On July 23, 2011 in General by spope

Over the past six weeks, we have experienced a more significant drought that we have seen in years. Back in 1988 we had basically three months without rain, producing a corn crop of about 20 bushels per acre (instead of the expected 120 bu/acre). Because of that ’88 drought our farm purchased an irrigation reel machine the very next year, hired a company to drill a higher volume irrigation well and bought piping to extend the ability of the irrigator to place water on the majority of our pens.

 

Since we purchased the irrigator, there have been years we have not used the irrigator at all for the entire season. Just so you are clear about the need for an irrigator here, my dad bought our main production farm primarily because it is one of the sandiest farms in our area. The 6” to 12” of topsoil we have is under laid by sand hundreds of feet deep. In years we have too much rain, our farm drains well, meaning the pheasants are not walking around in slop. In years of substantial rain, our cover crop is fantastic – a combination of well-drained soil, heat and lots of pheasant poop does the trick.

Just last year, 2010 – our pen crew never fired up the irrigator once. This year has been and entirely different story – the pen crew started irrigating over a month ago – at first irrigating from 8 am til about 4 pm. As the drought became more severe – the irrigator started being turned on as early as 5 am and was run until 10 pm. Two reasons we don’t irrigate between 10 pm and 5 am – first, if a pipe bursts or the irrigator goes off track (meaning into the pen – tearing up the irrigator and the fence) it can be a disaster and secondly – the well water coming out of the irrigator is very, very cold – and it’s dark – so the pheasants in the pens we irrigate don’t tolerate the water coming down from above very well. During the day – the pheasants can see to get away from the irrigator spray and it’s much warmer (lately hotter!!!) and the temperature of the water isn’t so critical.

This spring we purchased a new farm (called our River Road farm) and we rented the cropland there to Jerry Frei – a neighboring crop farmer – Jerry has an irrigation well of his own on the adjoining farm – and Jerry installed a center pivots (an irrigation machine that produces crop circles you might see from the air) on the River Road farm. Part of our agreement to rent to Jerry was that we could have water one day a week from his irrigation well. So we also irrigated our River Road farm last week for the first time ever.

With Jerry’s well also in proximity to our breeder farm, the decision was reached to irrigate there when we get water (for one day) from Jerry next week. We never have irrigated our breeder farm – ever. The breeders have gone out of production and the majority of the breeders have been moved to other farms and the breeder pens were quickly dug up and rotovated (kudos to our breeder crew!) and all we’ve needed was water. There was considerable discussion here about the difficulty and frankly hassle of irrigating the breeder farm – but with the newly planted ground needing water – there was no choice but for me to say we’ve got to move forward and do it.

Then it rained yesterday. Not just a little but a LOT. As I drove in the rain to work yesterday the rain intensified the closer I got to the farm. At our farm it was pouring. I was so cool. We got 1.6” of slow steady rain (no wind, or tornadoes or violent lightning). When I got out of my truck at the farm I didn’t mind getting wet. And the pen crew has stopped irrigating – for now. And we don’t have to irrigate the breeder farm – yet.



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