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`Top Guns' fly low to save crop in Glades
By Noah Bierman, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer PAHOKEE -- "It's a real fine line between life and death in the corn field." So says Chris Hopper, who's been farming here since 1972. He spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning directing helicopter pilots on missions to move warm, dry wind onto freezing corn stalks. Without these pilots keeping stalks dry and pushing temperatures just a few degrees higher, Winn-Dixie, Publix and the suburban produce stand wouldn't have so much sweet corn. About 30 helicopters and a few small airplanes -- Top Guns, Glades-style -- thumped over the Pahokee and Belle Glade corn fields late Wednesday through dawn Thursday. The low-fliers traversed half-mile fields marked at the corners by smudge-pot fires. The corn stalks and the smoke quivered a few rows at a time as the 30-foot-long propellers passed overhead, forcing the higher, warmer air to earth. Unlike oranges or sugar cane, which can withstand a short freeze, corn is vulnerable and likely to brown a few days after frost turns it dark green and slimy. Benton Tyson knows the drill. Each of the past 10 winters, the East Gate Farms manager has spent several days without sleep, calling pilots, checking field thermometers and hoping his corn survives. "I've always managed to save most of it," said Tyson, his face unshaven and his eyes wide-open from too little sleep. This cold spell, it was Tyson's mission to save as much of 280 acres as he could. Temperatures vary widely around Lake Okeechobee, so Tyson drives from field to field and sends fliers when he or his three assistants measure temperatures below 36 degrees. Tuesday, he paid $12,000 to keep six helicopters on call, but the air never got cold enough to fly. Wednesday night and Thursday morning, he and other farmers would need them, driving the cost of the same crew to $36,000. Starting about 11 p.m., small groups of pilots from Orlando, Miami, Lantana and elsewhere got up from their cots or sleeping bags sprawled in the small Pahokee Airport terminal and began flying. One or two to a helicopter, they flew two-and-a-half to three hours at a time between fuel breaks. Some helicopters have heat, some don't. Fuel breaks need to be short, so the temperature on the fields doesn't have time to drop. Using thermometers in their helicopters, pilots ascend to find warm spots. Because hot air rises, pilots say temperatures can measure 10 or more degrees higher at altitudes just above the fields. Once they find the point, called the inversion level, where the cold air ends and the warmer begins, they fly horizontally along it so that their propellers force that warmer air to the ground. To find the inversion level, one pilot said he looks at the cloud of smoke from the smudge pots and tries to fly at the level where the smoke flows horizontally. Thursday, pilots reported staying anywhere from 20 to 50 feet above the corn, depending on the size of their helicopters and the air temperatures they encountered. If they can't force the ground temperature above 32 degrees, the pilots may be able to keep corn from freezing by making sure it's dry. That often requires the helicopters to descend to a lower altitude. Too close to the ground, and they risk creating so much wind that they knock corn stalks down. "There's a thousand and one variables, hardly any of which you have any control of," says Hopper, a farm manager who flew airplanes for 12 years. "There are people in the business that don't understand it entirely." Russell Kilpatrick, who has his own farm in Moore Haven, has been frost flying for 16 or 17 years. He believes farmers have used this crop-warming technique since the 1950s, though the aircraft types have changed over the years. The first flier Kilpatrick heard of was a Bean City farmer who bought his own helicopter and taught himself to fly it in the 1960s. Thursday morning, Kilpatrick, 48, finished seven hours, stopping only for fuel. "We let one field go out there," he said, getting off the plane. "I don't know what became of it." That land belonged to Tyson's company. He told pilots to abandon 100 acres of short, knee-high stalks when temperatures reached 26 degrees. It wasn't worth what would likely be a futile attempt to save the young stalks. Tyson said he wouldn't replant corn there this season. Instead, he'll wait for September to plant sugar cane, already grown on many of the 4,000 acres he manages. Other corn farmers would count similar losses Thursday morning, though not all of them. Gene Duff, general manager of the Pioneer Growers Cooperative, said the 10 farmers he represents lost 400 to 600 acres among them. Hopper thinks he did well, but won't be sure for a few days. Is it worth all the lost sleep and expense? "You don't know till you sell it," Hopper said, noting that an acre of corn can be sold anywhere from $1,200 to $5,600. "It can be quite profitable. It also might not."
noah_bierman@pbpost.com
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