Bottomland farmer boats to submerged fields

LOUISIANA, Mo. -- For bottomland farmers, the fine line between a good year and a poor one can be gauged by whether they're pumping or planting.

The answer for seventh-generation farmer William "Shep" Sheppard can be found in the vehicle he reluctantly was driving Wednesday.

It wasn't a tractor.

"We've been pumping off and on for a month," Sheppard said, after boating to some of his submerged fields.

Sheppard's family owns Pike Grain Co., which covers about 7,000 acres and has more than 1,500 cattle around Louisiana.

More than half of the 3,000 acres of cropland are under water, and up to 600 may not be planted at all this year.

"It's going to be a couple of months before we can even get in the fields," said Terry Weaver, who is semiretired after more than three decades helping to manage the farm.

Normally corn planting would have been underway by now.

"That's shot down," Weaver said. "It's so muddy. We may be able to put in soybeans. It'll be late soybeans if we do that."

Of course, Pike Grain has had high water before, but Weaver calls this year's inundation the worst since the 1993 flood.

Like many bottomland farms, Pike Grain usually is OK even when other producers are affected by drought. That's because the soil is so close to the water table.

Floods shut down everything, and they tend to leave pests and debris in their wake. Sheppard tries to remain philosophical.

"It's the price of doing business," he said. "You get good years and bad years. We've been pretty fortunate."

Sheppard is trying to salvage some of the cropland by pumping water that has seeped through a levee back into the Mississippi River.

And, like a lot of farmers in the area, he's waiting for a few days without rain to get other acreage planted.

"It seems like every time the ground gets dry enough to plant, it rains," he said.

Insurance will cover part of the losses caused by flooding, but it won't be "what we would have grossed if we got a crop planted," Sheppard said.

Because they can't get out in the fields, workers are fixing equipment.

Despite all the water, there's at least one bright spot. Rainfall will lead to a bumper crop of hay.

"It's going to be the best we've had in years," Weaver predicted with a smile.