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Texas producers continue their conversation about black-eyed peas, their depleting water and 2021 production.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

October 12, 2020

For the last 50 years, Joe McFerrin has been farming near Cotton Center, Texas. This is the first time he and his daughter Shelley Berry and her husband Shane have grown black-eyed peas. 

Together, they visit with Farm Press about lessons learned, including needing a different kind of combine to harvest the peas, along with what they're considering for 2021. 

McFerrin also talks about the depleting irrigation water and the forecast for the drought in his region to continue into 2021. 

"You hate to give your water away," McFerrin says. 

To learn more about the McFerrin/Berry operation and black-eyed peas, click on the following links:

 

Read more about:

Black eyed PeasDrought

About the Author(s)

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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