New Irrigation System Will Minimize Weather Factor
Nov 19, 2010
Weather, mainly inadequate rain, has been a limiting factor for our crops the last three or four years.
I’m happy to say we’re about to address that issue on about 200 acres of our lighter ground with two center pivots. That’s about 10 percent of our total farmed acres.
Finding water was a bit more difficult than I’d anticipated. We had five test wells and only one was good, while the other four were insufficient. So, we had to change course a bit, and now we plan to use ponds for one of them, while the other will run off the well. We’ll take the delivery on the systems in mid-December and will start installation as soon as possible.
Yield consistency is what we’re looking for on this ground; we want to take out the weather variable. These farms are the lightest and poorest water-holding farms that I have. We think we’ll really benefit from having the irrigation in place. It will take a little while to pay for itself, but I’ve planned conservatively. I’m looking to recoup my investment in five years. It could happen faster, maybe in three years, but I wanted to not push it too hard too fast.
