|
| I moved down there in the early 90's for 3 years. At the time yeilds there were comparable to here, Tipton County, if not just a little better. Due to the tobacco budworm attack of 95 and a homesick wife I returned back to Brighton.
Alvin Hayes and his two sons from Brownsville had moved there a couple years before I did, last I had heard him and his oldest son Lawrence were still there.
Everything was backwards from here, rent was 35 to 45 an acre and the 45 dollar rent was considered extremely high. Land owners looked for available farmers like farmers look for land here.
Service like you get from CO-OP was unheard of there, the closest John Deere and Case dealerships were in Aliceville, Al and Columbus, Ms which was 30 and 45 miles away respectively. Gins were about 70 miles away. I dont know where the closest grainery was, all I ever had was cotton.
The biggest learning curve came from working the ground. Most of it is A Heavy heavy, black nasty stuff they called "the prairie". The water stank, heard Noxubee was an Indian word meaning smelly water and it lived up to its name. Water we made tea kool aid and coffee with we hauled from here, drinking water came from a water vendor. Water that came from town was not bad, but was high in sodium.
The farm I had had a center pivot with a well. There was so much sodium in the water that corn and beans would not grow on this farm any more. The man that owned the farm before I rented it went broke because of that pivot. Heard that he had spent $120000 on the well alone in the 70's and by the mid 80's his yeilds were so poor from corn and beans that he couldnt even pay the interest. A man from Memphis bought that farm.
If you know Joe Jenkins he can tell you alot about that area as he had a soil fertility business there then, dont know if he still does.
I would go back when my kids are out of school as there is no school system there to speak of which was another reason we left as my first child was in kindergarten at the time. Now she has graduated high school.
Mississippi State was more than willing to work with me, they used to come out and experiment with the automatic bridge on my KBH module builder. They used to rent it from me in the winter to module something with, cant remember what think it was called kenaff???? maybe, long time ago.
There is alot of farmers there from other parts of the country. I knew some from Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska and Kansas. There was also one there that farmed in Noxubee but lived somewhere in Iowa and farmed up there also.
Most of the farmers there were Mennonites.
At the time most of the ground was bedded on 30 inch beds in the fall. In the spring they just planted on top of those beds running nothing but a planter. Most of the grain farmers were on a bean corn rotation. Never saw any wheat there always heard the ground held to much moisture for it over the winter. Spring tillage was a pain to perform. The ground came up in slabs when it was dry enough to get across and would leave clods as big as watermelons if you werent careful. When you planted into fresh worked ground if you didnt have clods you wouldnt get any thing up if it didnt emerge before a rain as the ground would seal back over like asphalt.
When it was dry in the fall you would have ruts next to the builder before you finished up a module because it was so spongy. If you didnt get your crop out before it got muddy then you had problems. The ground would hold a picker up but would stick so bad to wheels it would eventually lock it up and you would have to clean it out to get it moving agian. THe Hayes's switched to 10 row planting and 5 row pickers the year I arrived just to spread the wheels on the picker out some to get through the mud. They said it was no fun being half a mile from the turnrow and having the picker quit moving.
| |
|
need info on farming in Noxubee County, MS.
