Outlaw Irrigation

About Outlaw Irrigation

By November the center-pivot towers standing over Gray County's circles go still, and Outlaw Irrigation trades summer water lines for winter plow blades once those fields lock up hard. Cimarron's grid of section roads turns to washboard ice fast under a Kansas norther, and getting a rural driveway or a farmstead lane scraped clear before daylight matters when the nearest neighbor is a half section away. The crew works the roads around the pivots they know from irrigation season, reading which low spots will drift first the way they once read which nozzles needed adjusting. Wind off the Cimarron National Grassland to the south can pile a foot of snow into a single lane overnight, and clearing it back to gravel is its own kind of satisfaction after a season spent chasing water instead of snow. It's a short season's work, but out here a clear lane home counts for a great deal.