Woofter Construction & Irrigation

About Woofter Construction & Irrigation

Before Wichita County is awake, the shop lights are already on at Woofter Construction & Irrigation, engines turning over slow in the cold while the crew loads blades onto trucks built for irrigation pipe in warmer months. The same equipment that lays center-pivot line across the High Plains in July runs plow routes in January, out past the edge of Leoti, along the farm-to-market roads, down driveways cut long to reach houses set back from the county grade. A hard snow out here doesn't drift evenly; it piles against machine sheds and pivot towers and leaves the open ground scoured almost bare, so the work is as much reading the wind as pushing a blade. Farms get opened first, since a rancher checking cattle in January can't wait on a road crew, and then the crew works back toward town, driveway by driveway. There's a particular kind of hush on a cleared farm road at sunrise, engine ticking as it cools, snow banked clean on either side, the whole flat country looking, for a minute, freshly drawn.