OK Not really!!! At the end of work yesterday me and the contractor building the lake were having a wind down bullshit session. Now we are pretty much identical in our political opinions and beliefs, a little bit right of center fiscally and a little bit left of center socially. You know the live your life however you want to as long as it is causing no one else real harm, but do it on your own dime. So we were having some laughs at both sides of the far left and right conspiracy theories. He says " You should take your from ground level videos and pictures and my Drone videos and pictures and spread around that the USDA is paying you to have this bean field destroyed. The theorist on both sides would eat it up and run with it!" Best angle of the same general area for the BEFORE picture that I took of the AFTER Picture area. Getting those pesky beans scraped off LOL. Starving America one pass of the Dozer at a time! Can't say I am thrilled with destroying 10 acres of beans! But July of this year was the only time frame the contractor had open this year to build the Lake. Ideally I would have had the lake built in the fall after the beans were harvested. I would have had to wait until the fall of 2023 if I did not start the Project this Month. The Local FSA/NCRS office is more than a little pissed off at me for destroying my beans and not consulting with them prior to starting the construction of the Lake. Low Pop County and Gossip spreads fast So Yesterday afternoon a pair of them are out angrily explaining to me that I am in breach of my contracts with them and there would be penalties and I would lose my 2022 subsidies BLAH BLAH BLAH. And OMFG you can't build a Lake without our technical support and guidance BLAH BLAH BLAH. They finally slowed down enough that I could get a word in and told them calm down! Take several deep breath and understand these fine points. I HAVE NO CONTRACTS WITH THE GOVERNMENT, I AM NOT ENROLLED IN ANY SUBSIDY OR OTHER GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS! WE ARE IN A UNINCORPORATED NO ZONING COUNTY SO I DO NOT NEED ANY PERMITS OR PERMISSION FROM ANYONE, INCLUDING YOUR OFFICE TO BUILD THIS LAKE. The Only PERMIT or PERMISSION I would need is from the Corp of Engineers ONLY if the dam will be taller than 45 feet or depth greater than 30 feet. The Dam will be 30' tall from center base to center top and the Depth will be a maximum 24' So my advice to you folks is get the hell off my land and stop pestering me! Now if I had wanted to......... I could have put the lake in a conservation easement/trust with the NCRS and they would have paid for 75% of the lake construction. Then I could have gotten a SARS Grant to pay for another 110% of the Lake Construction. Then I could have gotten one or all three of the State grants that would have put another $12,000 in my pocket and if I was so inclined I could have whipped out the POW card and played the NdN Card for another $8,000 just because the Government believes I am a financially and socially disadvantaged minority. All total The lake could have been 100% tax payer funded and put a spare $54,000 in my pocket through various incentives, handouts and grants. The entire lake project is only going to cost $48,000-$50,000. $30,000 to dig and push the dirt for the dam and removing the top soil and sub soil into a new good size hill. $7,200 for the 6 semi loads of Rip Rap. $10,000 for fish stocking over 3 years, and whatever the sand for the beach and material to build the two boat docks will cost. Where the theorist on both sides should be concerned is that the Government picks the Tax Payer pockets to give a bit better than double what a project actually cost away if the grantee milks the Government teats just right. I WILL NEVER TAKE GOVERNMENT MONEY FOR ANYTHING. I Did ONCE and there are way to many strings attached to the Government *Helping* you than I can stomach!!! Truth is I did not want to plant beans in that field this year to start with! I had planned it for corn but could not get the Nitrogen to make a decent corn harvest. So my options were go with lower input beans or just no plant it. I wish now that I had just not planted it! But destroying the low beans for the lake is not horrible the sides and bottom are the low yield parts of the field. The tops are the high yielding parts of the field. So I will still get a decent bean harvest from the 8 acres of tops on that field. As far as the Government paying farmers to destroy crops.......... I have never been offered, ordered or bribed by the Government to destroy any crop and don't any other farmers that have either. Other than in 2012 the Alpha Toxin was so high in the corn and the ears so small many farmers took the no harvest disaster payments and crop insurance and bush hogged the corn fields, rather than harvest a crop that was highly toxic due to the mold that was a result of the 2012 extreme drought we had. Since I take ZERO Government hand outs..... 2012 was a real kick in the sack for me, but part of risk vs reward farming style I play. LOL can't say I did not envy my friend that enrolls in every Government program there is, he made 1.8X more in 2012 by destroying the corn crop than if he had harvested it in a bumper crop year. Me...... I lost the inputs, the crop, and the time invested in planting. Fortunately I prepare for years like that and keep enough corn in my grain bank reserve to weather two years of bad or no crop for the livestock feed and always keep enough cash specific to row crops in reserve to go at again the next year. Seriously there is enough real stuff going down that the conspiracy theory folks really do not have to make shit up or portray things out of context and put so much effort into finding a Bogeyman under every bed and hiding in every closet. LOL I did post the before and after pics in a small conspiracy oriented forum I amuse myself with........ Title WTF THE USDA IS MAKING ME DESTROY MY CROPS FOR NO REASON!!! They are eating that crap up and running with it Seems pretty obvious to me that if I was being forced to destroy my crops......... that I would just use a burn down spray rather than Dozers and track hoes burning $1200 of diesel fuel per day
Hey, if ya got any critters (goats or cows, especially), they'd probably appreciate some tender young bean plants!
I ran a couple acres through the silage chopper the hogs are the only ones that have any interest in them
My Father was a cotton farmer here in N. Alabama, and the only time the Feds "paid" anyone to destroy crops was if you had planted more acres than your farm was allotted. Every year the ASCS office would send the County Agents around to survey the farms, and if you had planted 110% of your cotton allotment and wished to receive your federal farm subsidies then you had to destroy 10% of your crop, usually the poorest 10%. My Daddy loved LBJ because of his farm programs, but he hated all of that Civil Rights and Great Society bullshit. One way around the allotment restrictions was to go to S. Alabama and lease the cotton allotment from those farmers that weren't using it and transfer it to a farm in N. Alabama. We made the trip down to Enterprise and Dothan many times.
You invoked a memory I have not visited in a long time. First food trailers I worked was for a friend that always needed CDL to move from show to show on the Fair Circuit always called me asked me if I would drive joints from the Duqoin State Fair here down to the Knoxville TVA Fair, then over to the Memphis Fair, then Down to the Jackson MS Fair, then over to the Dothan AL Peanut Festival and finally landing at his winter quarters in Tampa FL. Most of the time I just drove the joints to where they needed to be and then drove back home. He paid very well for the shuttling and it was a nice break from the farm. Got to where I stayed and ran one of the joints at two of the shows for him. The Knoxville TVA Fair just because I have quite a few friends that reside within 75 mile of Knoxville and spending 2 weeks there gave me some time to visit with them. And Dothan and the peanut festival, started out it was just a really long drive home from Way down there and I would have to bounce back to make the jump to Tampa anyway so may as well hang out in Dothan for the show and return home after everything was moved to Tampa. Ended up making friends down there as well. LOL three things stand out about Dothan. I almost had the next Mrs. T5R there was a good relationship for around 5 years but she was a Peanut and Cotton farmer and was not going to leave her farm for Southern IL. and I was a Hog, Cattle and Row Crop farmer and was not going to leave my farm for AL. Still good friends with her and her husband and me and Mrs T5R make the trip every couple of years to go visit them and they come up every couple of years to visit us. Kind of weird that a X girlfriend and Mrs T5R became such good friends......... I think that friendship started when they started comparing notes about me LOL. The guy she ended up marrying is a great guy. LOL I am a big guy at 6' 3" and 285 pounds......... he makes me look like a little guy. Can't say we are best friends but we can kill a couple of cases of beer over the course of a night and spread a lot of bullshit in the process. LOL we get some strange looks when they visit here and we hit the local restaurant.... SO a 6' 9" giant Black Guy, A big half white/half Indian, a 5'4" white woman and a 5' 8" half white/black woman walk in and the whole place goes silent hehe. When we visit down there and hit their local favorite eatery no one even gives us a second glance. Second thing that stands out and that I will never forget about Dothan...... I was helping another vendor set up her display that sat on straw bales and and was setting the bales up for her and grabbed a bale that was FULL OF FIRE ANTS. That was the first time I met fire ants! Those pricks swarmed out of the bale on my arms and I swear the little assholes all bit me at the same time! I learned that I have a very STRONG DISLIKE OF FIRE ANTS!!! And third the last year I was at the Peanut Festival Montgomery Gentry Rolled in in the middle of the night after the fair was closed up and I had just finished cleaning the joint up. LOL I had no idea who a Montgomery Gentry was and these two guys walk up from the Stage area and say "We will each give you a $100 bill if you fire that grill back up and make us some food!" Sat there bullshitting with them for a hour while they ate figuring I was talking to a couple of Roadies. The next night those two Roadies were on the Stage and opened up with this song. LOL the night before I would have never guessed them to be the stars of the show. Never saw them again but became a fan of their music. My own business was picking up and I couldn't keep running off for days or weeks at a time from August through November anymore and didn't need the money I made helping my friend out to make ends meet on the farm anymore. But Dothan will always be a little gem in my heart and memory. Good folks down in AL. Probably the friendliest over all people I have met any where.
Dothan people are great people. When you are in Dothan you are not far from me. Nice place to live if you can stand the heat and the fire ants.
#1 Nobody likes fire ants! and #2 It's 4:45 PM, the temperature is 95F with 41% humidity, and the Heat Index is 100F! What I want to know is, "When is summer gonna get here?". #3 If you go to the town of Enterprise, Alabama, you can see a monument to the Boll Weevil....and that is the reason farmers down there didn't need their cotton allotment.
