Watering Corn for Rawl

When I started working for Rawl, I was a wee lad of 10 years old.  For a couple of years, I fed calves, cleaned stalls, brought the cows in from the pasture to be milked, and sometimes fed the cows hay in the evening.  When I was 12 years old, I started to grow and became more physically capable.  Rawl asked me if I would like to help him water (irrigate) his corn that he was raising for silage.  The silage was winter feed for the cows.  He told me he would pay me extra during the summer for help with this.  I was excited to become more useful and more fully integrated into the overall farming operation.

Now watering corn wasn't turning on some sprinkling system like a center pivot or a big gun sprinkler.  The type of corn watering I did was like 19th century technology stuff.  It was hard work that required attention to detail.  We used ditches, shovels, rocks, and the most high tech stuff of all was old, empty corn seed bags to act as dams.

The corn needed watering from roughly mid-June through the end of August.  Rain was scarce and pretty much inconsequential in Utah.  In the Farmington, the average annual rainfall was high for Utah, at about 18 inches a year.  The summer saw maybe two inches of rain.  To put that in perspective, corn needs about two inches of rain a week to thrive.  This is the type of rain that certain areas of the midwest receive that allows them to grow corn without irrigation.

During the summer, after morning chores were completed at about 8:00, I would run home for a quick breakfast.  I would pack up my ice water jug and head to one of three or four corn fields Rawl had.  I would ride my bike to two of the fields or walk to two other fields.  The highly coveted irrigation water would be available in the ditch.

I would use my shovel, rocks, and paper bags to create a diversion and a dam in the ditch to bring the water to the tops of the corn rows which had furrows between them.  I would use my shovel to place little rocks in the water path to regulate the amount of water flowing down each furrow.  The goal was to get water in all of the rows from the top of the row to the bottom of the row at about the same time.  This required the initial set up of the water turn and constant monitoring to see if each row needed more or less water from the top.  Much of the time was just watching and checking.  Watering corn also gave a lot of time for having a wandering mind, thought, and contemplation.  Sometimes when things were going well, it allowed for a short little nap under a tree in the shade.  I would try to get a good stable set at about 1:30 or 2:00, then make a mad dash for home to get some lunch.  Then I would race right back.

Each water turn typically took about 90 minutes.  That is how long it took to get the water from the top of the rows to the bottom.  I typically had enough water to do about ten rows at a time.  The field sizes were between four and ten acres.  Usually, it would take two days to water most of the fields.  I would water corn Monday through Saturday.  Rawl gave me Sunday off from watering corn.  I really, really looked forward to that Sunday.  To me, it truly was a day of rest.

Rawl typically had about 20-25 acres of corn for silage.  That amount of corn would feed Rawl's cows corn silage from about October to April, when they were off of the pasture.

As the corn grew, I had to walk the rows to make sure I could see where the water was and to repair any furrow damage that resulted from the water washing over from one furrow to another.  Ultimately the corn would grow to about eight feet tall, with pollen covered tassles at the top.  The pollen would drop all over me and get in my shirt.  At times my skin would welt up because of the pollen.  Generally that was my least favorite part.

Watering corn was "teenager" work.  I was glad to be viewed as a teenager and able to contribute more to Rawl's modest dairy farm.  Watering corn was not all fun and games.  It was hard work.  It was hot, sweaty, and sometimes frustrating.  It was also very satisfying when I got the end of the summer and we had a good corn harvest.