In Paulding County in northwest Ohio, where fifth-generation farmer Terry McClure calls home, rainwater is plentiful.

“We just happen to farm in an area that has heavy, black soils and historically has gotten a fair amount of rain,” Terry says. Still, he adds, “There are farmers in our county that spend all of their time looking for the next drop of water,” to assure crops hit certain growth milestones.

Terry says that growers don’t irrigate much in their area for two main reasons: all of the rain they get and the limited amount of groundwater available to pump through an irrigation system.

Pump irrigation systems
Several years ago, McClure Farms looked into installing a center pivot to supplement their rainfall. “When we started looking at drilling wells into our limestone, we were told the most they thought we could find was a couple hundred gallons of water per minute, and we would possibly risk the neighbor’s wells. So, at that point, it came off the table,” Terry remembers.

A few years later, Andy Farnham of Valley dealer A.G. Irrigation cold-called McClure to see if they could figure out an alternative water source.

After considering options, such as building a pond, Andy and Terry decided to bring in the irrigation pumping experts from Valley® Irrigation to look into pumping water from a nearby creek. “Andy got the water management experts from Valley involved, the water people who are used to putting pump stations in creeks. They came out, looked at our site, and did the calculations on the back of an envelope quickly right there and said ‘yeah, we think this is totally doable’.”

The pump site turned out to be an ideal location. Local electricity was readily available, and the pump site was 3/8 of a mile away from where the first pivot would be. “We’re pumping water out of a creek that you would not assume would be able to support this,” explains Terry.

Valley installed a 500 gallon-per-minute pump that supports two Valley 8000 series center pivots over 260 acres of land; Valley strongly believes they can supply a third pivot that feeds from the same source in the future. “We can pump water, and we can get three center pivots off of this pumping station. We’ll take that,” Terry said.

Hitting Growth Milestones
After two seasons with their pump and pivots in place, the McClures can already see the benefits of the project. They put down a “shot” of water at precise moments when the seed or plant needs it the most, making sure they hit growth milestones. “Wheat usually gets starved a little bit for water during corn and bean planting time, which is normally a fairly dry time,” explains Terry. “We are able to add water to it, then give it that last shot it needs.”

It’s not just their wheat that has benefited from the irrigation, but the corn and beans, too. “After you plant your corn or your beans, or even your wheat, putting that quarter inch of water on top of the field, to make sure that the seed starts and gets germinated as quickly and as evenly as possible, can make all the difference to the development of the plant.”

“We see this as an opportunity to take the same land and same machinery, and get more out of that crop,” Terry says.