Tag Archives: flooding

Watermelon Harvest Underway in Crisp County After a Rollercoaster 2026 Growing Season

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Cordele, GA |

Down in Crisp County — also known as watermelon country — crews are busy in the fields harvesting fresh melons that will be supplying stores across Georgia and the country. Getting to this point, however, was no easy task, as the 2026 growing season proved to be a rollercoaster ride for producers.

“This year’s growing season started out with severe drought and warm days — watermelons really took off. Then we slowed down with some cooler days, still dry. And then all of a sudden, all the rain just came at one time,” said Jacob Jackson of Jackson Farms. “It’s been tough. Real sporadic weather altogether. Seen it all.”

THE DROUGHT WASN’T THE PROBLEM — THE DOWNPOUR WAS

For Jackson, the prolonged dry stretch actually wasn’t the worst part for his melons. With drip irrigation running through his fields, he was able to manage the lack of rain. The real damage came when the dry stretch broke all at once.

“As far as the drought, we can water these melons — I have all these watermelons on drip right here. Disease pressure is non-existent, everything goes very smoothly. Obviously input costs with irrigating go up, but what we don’t need is a watermelon to go through a whole dry stage and then all of a sudden get hit with ten inches of rain at one time,” Jackson said. “It’s just not prepared for that. It can bring the vines down, disease pressure can hit you — wet feet especially. A watermelon doesn’t need that much water. It just drowns out at that point.”

HARVEST SEASON: SMOOTH, BUT NOT SIMPLE

After a tough growing season, harvest has been fairly smooth — though it came with its own set of challenges once the rains finally arrived mid-season.

“Harvest season has been going pretty smooth. Obviously when the rain came, it made it tough dragging buses left and right, really rutting up fields, making a mess,” Jackson said. “But then it finally dried off and we’ve had a smooth go lately. The main thing about the heat is that as soon as it warms up after a big rain like that, the vines just want to melt and everything tries to get ripe at one time. Then it’s go, go, go — you have no choice but to put buses in the field and get your product out.”

THE SKILL BEHIND EVERY MELON

Getting that product out of the field, though, is no small task. Harvesting watermelons is done entirely by hand and depends on a workforce that truly knows what they’re doing.

“Watermelons are always going to be labor intensive — there’s no way around it. When you go into a watermelon field, you hope to get about three to four cuttings per field. You’ve got two crews: cutters and loaders,” Jackson said. “The cutters are really the most important contributors to this farm, because they determine what good quality goes into each and every bin that gets sold to consumers. Training a cutter — they’ve just got a knack for it. They know what they’re looking for. They can see a watermelon and know it’s ripe.”

For Crisp County’s watermelon producers, 2026 has been a season that tested just about everything — but as the bins fill and the trucks roll out, the harvest is proof that Georgia’s watermelon country knows how to weather the storm.

By: John Holcomb

Burke County Brothers at Idlewood Farms Say 2026 Has Felt Like Survival, Not Farming

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Waynesboro, GA |

For Robert and Sid Prescott, two brothers who farm together in Burke County, the 2026 growing season has felt less like farming and more like survival. The Prescotts own and operate Idlewood Farms — an 850-acre Bermuda grass and beef cattle operation known for producing top-quality forage. But this year has tested them in ways they’ve never been tested before.

“Going back to last year, we lost our last cutting of hay — when it got dry in August, we didn’t even get that last cutting. Then we came into April this year with no rain, very little rain in March,” said Robert Prescott. “You start getting just a tiny bit of rain the first of May and see the grass start greening up. You fertilize, and you’re looking at the hay and it’s finally getting right. Well, then we get one more rain and it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re going to have the perfect cutting now.’ Then the last nine days of May, we had nine inches of rain. We had standing water in these fields. We couldn’t even get in them to make hay.”

A SEASON THROWN OFF COURSE

That drastic shift — from bone dry to underwater — threw off everything from cutting schedules to quality. A farm that normally aims for four strong cuttings of hay per season is now far behind pace.

“We try to get four good cuttings — we’d like to see five, but we really shoot for four. This year, we’re still in cutting one, so the whole timeline is off,” Robert said.

“We’re at least twenty days behind schedule — probably about twenty-two days, honestly. Our grass is getting longer, our quality is going to be lower because it’s going to be older hay,” said Sid Prescott. “We might get three cuttings this year, and our numbers are going to be short. We know that already.”

RISING COSTS, FLAT PRICES

That shortfall puts the Prescotts in a tough spot — not just with their own cattle herd, but with the customers who depend on them for hay. And rising input costs are squeezing margins on a product whose price hasn’t budged in years.

“Our fertilizer costs are up about thirty-one percent this year across the board, and our fuel costs are up about sixty percent from last year,” Sid said. “It’d be like spending three times as much money to sell a cake for the same price. Our hay prices haven’t moved in the last seven years. Our inputs are rising and our crop values are the same — so we’re going to start losing money if we can’t produce more yield.”

QUALITY BEFORE QUANTITY

Despite the pressure, the Prescotts say cutting corners isn’t something they’re willing to consider. For them, quality is a promise they’ve made to their customers — and themselves.

“We’ve got to stay true to ourselves. We’re only going to sell our customers products that we know are desirable,” Sid said. “We’re not going to sacrifice quality over quantity. We’re going to try to remain very optimistic and know that we’re selling a product that we would want to use ourselves.”

For Robert, the only way to get through a year like this is to keep moving forward — even when so much feels beyond their control.

“When you can’t control what’s going on, you’re just having to roll with the punches. Well, this year feels like you’re dodging bullets. So many things are out of our control,” he said.

For the Prescotts, the fields will dry out, the cuttings will come, and the season will eventually end. But 2026 has made clear just how much farmers can be asked to absorb before a single bale of hay ever leaves the field.

By: John Holcomb