MONTEVALLO, Ala. (DTN) -- It's nine o'clock on a mid-August Monday morning in Alabama. The thermometer is already bumping 90 degrees. The dew point sits uncomfortably in the 70s. There remains, as always, a decent chance for a popup thunderstorm or two. Otherwise, it is the buzz of scissor-grinder cicadas that provide the musical score for another hazy day down here in Dixie.

Paul Smith of Montevallo in central Alabama has already picked a sizeable number of watermelons from his 5-acre patch. Two pickup truck loads of Jubilee melons, oblong with dark green strips and about 40 pounds apiece, await delivery to a local outlet.

Smith's shadow is seldom stationary. However, he invites his guest to sit for a few minutes under a pair of whirling porch fans. Sodas and ice are at hand. As is common in August, the conversation of football comes up, this time briefly. Smith offers that he's not big on high school football, although he played ball back in his day. Today's players only know football, he says. The skills of a pulling guard don't have much value on the farm.

Talk like this is near heresy down here in land of Friday Night Lights and the Southeastern Conference. No, actually it is outright heresy. So, he turns to something safe, like cotton.

"The cotton looks pretty decent," Smith says. "Although, we could use a rain right now." All around his home place, good rains have fallen since mid-June, but little at the Smith home, with the exception of a tenth here and there. It's been even drier in Perry County, a couple of counties south of home. Smith grows some cotton there, too. He also tends peanuts down there.

Smith has been farming for 34 years and has planted cotton in each one of them. August is when the cotton crop is made. This August is especially important, because there is a lot of value in 2011-crop cotton. Earlier in the season, Smith booked some cotton for $1 a pound. He has never done that before.

"It's a little bit early, but if I had to guess, my overall average might be 600 to 700 pounds (per acre). That's pretty good for Alabama," he says.

Unfortunately, hot weather continued to beat down on the crops. Contacted at the end of August, Smith figures he lost 200 pounds per acre because of the heat and lack of rain. He says they had temperatures in the upper 90s for most of the past month, with scattered rains, at best.

"Things have really gone down hill in the last four to six weeks," he says.

Weeds and bugs have not been much of an issue this year. Smith is beginning to deal with glyphosate-resistant palmer amaranth. But, "there's been no real problems this year. We've kept it cleaned up," he says. There has been no pressure from stinkbugs or worms. "The insect pressure has been real low," he adds.

Smith's wheat harvest was a success. His 350 acres averaged 80 bushels. "They brought a good price," he says.

Smith double-cropped soybeans into the wheat stubble. That double crop is beginning to flower. He's happy with their progress. "We caught a rain right after we planted them" in mid-June, he says. Smith works 400 acres of full-season beans down in Perry County.

By this week, the early-planted beans look OK, and he thinks he will get 30 to 35 bu. per acre. But the second-crop beans behind the wheat look bad while they are flowering. "I'm not sure they'll make 10 bushel(s)."

As for corn, Smith averaged 95 bushels in 2010. That was a pretty good total for here. "Except for the nitrogen, it's not an expensive crop," he says. A decent corn harvest can put good money toward the bottom line.

But six weeks with no rain and with heat -- daytime highs in the upper 90s, nighttime lows dipping to the upper 70s -- hurt this corn crop. With corn harvest a month or less away, Smith expected he'd shell 30 bushels an acre. "It might fool us," he said. "We might make 40 or 45 (bushels)." But he didn't look convinced.

When contacted at the end of August, he admits he did better than he thought. He finished harvesting the corn and he got the 45 bu. per acre average.

"It's tough to grow corn in Alabama," he admits. "But we try to grow some every year. It breaks up our harvest time." Smith can combine corn in September, removing 300 or 400 acres early from the total, before he tackles cotton.

Smith and family's operation produces the cotton and corn, soybeans, wheat, peanuts, some vegetables and other produce, such as the watermelons and sweet corn. This year, he sold scarce sweet corn for up to $16 a bushel, about double the normal price.

All told, he works 2,400 acres, 75 miles from end-to-end, with sons, Luke and Jim, and his wife, Patti.

And, also helping out this summer is a nephew who is a rising high school senior, who does play football -- position unknown -- and who is not invited to sit under the fans as he wanders by. A little more farm work will do him good -- and make him a little more valuable in the future.

 

Each year, DTN finds growers with different crop mix plans to feature in our Planting Choices series. We will visit these producers at planting time, during the growing season and at harvest to see how the year treats them. This was the third of the profiles.

Dan Miller can be reached at dan.miller@telventdtn.com.

(ES/AG)

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