T3RRA recently sent out an email announcing the new webinar session ‘Talking Dirt’ and included in this email was a link to ‘T3ST your T3RRA knowledge’. The first correct submission would receive a personalized webinar session with Gwen & James. After the email went out, it wasn’t long before we started seeing submissions coming in! The first person to achieve 100% was Nick Teague of Stantonville, Tennessee USA. Nick is a Tennessee Tractor customer and supported by Robert Marbury.
Nick Teague manages Mid-South Family Farms which is a 4600 acre farm in Tennessee where 95% of the ground is leased. They were hesitant to invest in land forming on ground the farming operation did not own. It was obvious something needed to be done because they had drainage issues decreasing crop yields.
In August of 2019, Nick met with Robert Marbury of Tennessee Tractor to discuss their options. At that time, they owned 8345 tractors pulling a Leibrecht Ditcher, a 20’ box blade, and a carry-all dump scraper. They were using SWP+ for their ditching projects but needing better solutions. They complained about spending too much time in-cab out in the field trying to design. They wanted the ability to use Auto Drains back at the office to create ditching projects and not waste time in-field. They also wanted to load projects of 500+ acres at a time for analysis purposes. This would allow them to make informed decisions regarding different sections of the field for land forming projects.
The decision was made to purchase T3RRA Cutta to place drains across farm sections with the Auto Drains tool and use T3RRA Design (comes with T3RRA Cutta purchase) to load large project files and utilize its many guides and surface derivatives for project analysis.
Mid-South Family Farms had never performed full field land forming on their ground. Robert picked the worst section of a field and used the tools in T3RRA Design to create a design and illustrate how the water would react on the new surface. Robert was able to show 4.1 acres of Depressions in a 19.3 acre section. 21% of that section had depressions hurting yield. He used a Multi-fit design with a 0.15 to 0.20 slope. The ground would have beds put back on it so he used the planter headings for the direction of slope. Nick was skeptical but knew the field ‘couldn’t get any worse’ and hired Tennessee Tractor to perform the full field land forming project.
After a heavy rainfall this spring, the block they land formed drained and was ‘plantable’. The other areas of the field retained a lot of water and they were unable to plant in those sections. Plans for future full field projects are definitely under consideration.
In April of 2020, Mid-South Farms purchased two more licenses. This time they decided the best choice was T3RRA Ditch. They could use their ditchers to clean out drainage paths utilizing T3RRA Ditch’s comprehensive tools and perform full field land forming with T3RRA Cutta.
Robert Marbury demonstrated his ability to understand his customers needs and provide land forming solutions to increase yields and improve overall water management efficiency. T3RRA is proud to have him and Tennessee Tractor on our team!