Crawfordsville, Arkansas | indeeppigfarmer - 2/21/2021 16:20
I probably misunderstood the op question... thought he was wanting to get set up for irrigation even though it isn’t often (or ever) used in his area.
Here leveling for irrigation would end up messing up a farm even though it happened a lot years ago. And dirtwork for drainage means digging a ditch ( which is hard to get approved today)
What does “messing up a farm” really mean?
Water runs downhill. There’s lots of acres here leveled to perfection. But there’s a lot done to get it to row water. Meaning it’s not perfectly on grade but water will go from the high end to the low end. Not real ideal for rice farming but for cotton, corn beans or milo it’s great.
In the pic below it shows about 320 acres. It “used to” have a 7 tower towable Valley pivot on it. The red dots show the center of each circle. There was a ditch it had to cross on the north circle. 14 culverts. There was a wide culvert between the circles to be able to tow it. At one point there was 2 houses on the north circle. It would pass one but had to make a stop and reverse at the other.
The farm was leveled. Pivot was taken down and sold. Wells on each circle were used so no new wells had to be put in. All 8 dry corners were brought back into high production instead of being non irrigated acres. All 14 useless culverts were removed massively improving drainage.
I know this is Arkansas and not Nebraska or Minnesota or wherever but this is massively far better “here” than the pivot ever thought about being.
A 1/4 mile roll of polypipe is @$300-350. Bed the land up and plant on the beds or plant flat and furrow it later. Lay the pipe out, turn the well on, poke holes and watch 100% of your field get water. It works. It works very well here. It doesn’t work on every acre here. I guess pivots are better than nothing on those acres.
Edited by Detroit 2/21/2021 22:42
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Cost to level land to grade
