Monday, June 1, 2009

Crop circles


Around here, crop circles are made by Center Pivot Irrigators. Basically, they are giant sprinklers that rotate in a circle as they water an entire field worth of crops. 

We have one on one of our fields. The field is a "quarter section" or 160 acres. It is 1/2 of a mile on each side. That means the irrigator is 1/4 of a mile long. It uses 650 gallons of water per minute. That is a LOT of water.

The farmer renting our field turned on the big sprinkler today. This is earlier than usual, but since we just experienced the 3rd dried May on record, he needed it. At the rate we are going, the irrigator is not going to get much rest.

It is interesting that conditions are so dry, yet Pope County is one of the Counties eligible for flood relief for flooding earlier this spring.


These images came from Wikipedia. 

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