One of the things I really like is meeting with farmers on their operations and talking off topic, unrelated to the subject I am there to write about. Many of those topics are just as interesting as what I end up writing about, but not something I would necessarily run in Delta Farm Press for various reasons.

My favorite subjects are landscape, flora and fauna. I don’t hunt a lot because I get more caught up in the topography of the country or some odd plant or following an animal I’m tracking just to see where it goes.

I once followed a bighorn sheep up the side of a cliff just to see how it made its way up – I was more of an avid climber than hunter at one time.

I was once deer hunting and found a plant I had never seen before. I broke some of it off to take home to find out more about it. I put it in a Ziplock bag that I always carried with me. By the time I got too far, I had to dispose of the bag because the heavy chemical smell it exuded became so noxious I could no longer keep it in my pack.

To this day, I don’t have any idea what the plant was.

So, when this year’s Peanut Efficiency Award winner from the Delta, Drew Parrish, asked me if I wanted to see an old cut in the bluff they used as a shortcut to their farm in the hills, of course I said yes.

The route is a pretty dynamic climb up out of the flatlands. In places the sides of the narrow cut climb 20-feet straight up, lined with old trees. Some of the trees are malformed because of erosion that has undercut them years ago and redirected their growth.

Drew said they used to drive their two-row pickers down the steep cut during harvest. That changed when larger pickers became the norm and would no longer fit into the cut. And since cotton pickers are top heavy anyway, I probably wouldn’t even try it in an old two-row.

The bluffs on the edge of the Delta in Mississippi are abrupt in the landscape. One of my favorite drives is north on Highway 61 where the bluff eases its way toward the highway on its way north into the Memphis metropolitan area. A lucky few have built homes along the bluff to take advantage of the elevated view.

There are many wildlife and recreation areas, even a few state parks, along the line of bluffs from Missouri down into Louisiana.

Where the Delta meets the hills is a special place and worth exploring. Of course, if you explore, like when you hunt, make sure you know if the land is private or public and plan accordingly.