BY STEPHEN H. COWLES/CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Playback58@gmail.com

SOUTHAMPTON—Flaggy Run Farms between Courtland and Hunterdale took third place in the irrigation category of the National Corn Growers Association’s 47th annual Corn Yield Contest.

“You never know,” said Jamie Lee of Flaggy Run Farms. “We enter every year, and have placed in numerous years before.”

An award will be presented during a late February ceremony in Williamsburg.

Lee got into farming part time in 1996 and now has 425 to 600 acres devoted to corn.

“Some years less or more, depending on the rotation we’re on with cotton and soybeans and market prices,” Lee said.

The yield is about 50 to 60 percent irrigated, he said. Pivot irrigation is used. This features 10 fixed structures in the fields year-round.

“We planted the crop and worked it just like we always do,” Lee said. “It’s up to the good Lord after that. A lot we can’t control.”

There’s still work to be done from this past year’s yield.

“We haven’t finished moving it all yet,” he said. “We usually move grain in the winter.”