|
| Yes we have met and yes the land across from the Owens is mine, well my Grandpa's land. I have rented it to David Hanks as I have a stupid burning desire to farm, just not here. That is why I left to go to Noxubee County. I used to work the Owens place and Miss Mary's in between it.
I think there was one more pivot down there at the time that was on a well. It was in the northern part of the county and wasn't as deep as the one I had and didn't pump as much salt water. I wont to say it was around 300 feet and the one I had was about 1500. All the other pivots down there were fed with catch water. It was nothing to see a 300 or 400 acre field with a 50 or 60 acre lake on it to feed the pivot. I remember the Hurkamps used to put a sailboat on one of their pivot lakes. Catfish farming was a coming boom when I left.
As far as yields under the pivot, I cant tell you much about them. The first year I was there it had been left in the middle of the field from the former tenant. He had so much problems with it that when he got rained out on his last lap he left it where he cut it off and just picked around it. The story goes that the first year he had cotton on this farm that it picked over 3 bales to the acre. They say that he had modules lined end to end across both turn rows and trailers out in the middle of the field. Cotton was just starting to be grown again in that area and people drove 40 to 50 miles to see that pretty field of cotton. He worked it for 2 more years after that and said he never came close to those yields again. I was still scrapping cotton and cutting beans here in February of 93 when I moved. I got everything moved and settled there in March and it rained so much there that spring that corn farmers that normally started planting corn at the end of February and finishing in March were still planting in May. It was in July before I got around to the pivot. That year the last rain we got was 8 tenths on June 8th. It didn't rain again till August 6th and rained 6 inches. I have never forgotten the dates or amounts because of the way they coincided with each other, but anyway I made one circle with it at the end of July and that field made about 600 lbs while other irrigated cotton there made 700 and un irrigated made about 500. The next year I don't think I even made a lap with it, It started raining in June and didn't stop until The first of August. It rained so much that when the sun would shine the cotton would wilt so bad that it looked like it hadn't rained in a month. It took it until the middle of August before the sun would quit making it wilt. Allot of the cotton there that year didn't have any nitrogen on it until August. Fortunately I had finished mine the morning it started raining. Cant complain about the rain though I averaged 950 lbs that year and didn't have to mess with that pivot.
Then next year I think I made about 3 circles with it before the worms hit. The insurance company made me pick that farm, It picked 42 bales off of 440 acres, the other farm I had they let me mow it without picking it, all 550 acres of it.
I imagine soybean yields there now would be about like yields here. If you got rain when you needed it they would make big yields if you didn't, well you would be SOL.
Going back to Owen Taylor's reply about the black dirt and the heart broken story reminds me of what someone else down there told me. He had moved there in the 70's from Indiana in between Gary and Chicago IL. He said the first year he sent his two sons down there to farm while he finished up and sold the land they had in Indiana. About the middle of the summer he carried his banker down there to show him all the "wonderful black dirt" that he had just financed for them to buy and farm, little did he know at the time how not so wonderful that "wonderful black dirt" was.
| |
|
need info on farming in Noxubee County, MS.
