NATCHEZ — The area’s crops are scorching, withering under an inhospitable, uncaring sky, clear of clouds and providing no shield from the sun’s unrelenting rays.

Even when night falls, the heat remains, clinging to the earth and never giving a drop of relief to grass dying of thirst in dry soil that is every day one step closer to becoming dust.

But that is not the case in Robert Longmire’s field.

Longmire is one of the Adams County farmers lucky enough to have not one but two working irrigation systems, which have saved his sod farm from oblivion this summer.

“We are using the fool out of the irrigation systems,” he said.

Entering into the ninth week of no rain in his part of southern Adams County, Longmire said he’s been moving his irrigation systems across his fields of Centipede, St. Augustine and Bermuda grass.

“Irrigation is an inexact science as far as we are concerned,” Longmire said. “We are just trying to keep things from dying.”

That inexact science starts in an underground well, where pumps generate enough pressure to operate what are essentially large sprinkler systems.

Longmire uses two irrigation systems to bring rain from the ground when it doesn’t fall from the sky.

The first is a traditional side-row system, a large pipe system on wheels that can be moved to a new position whenever necessary, and which sprays jets up to 60-feet wide.

The second is what he called a “water cannon.”

“The water cannon is the coolest,” Longmire said.

The water cannon, once set up, is attached to a cable and water the pressure moves the cannon along.

“It pulls itself across the field and throws water 250-feet wide,” Longmore said.

The water cannon may be cooler, but Longmire said the side-row system is used the most for simplicity’s sake.

“We just hook a hose to it and turn the well on,” he said.

Regardless of which system he uses, however, Longmire said he’s glad to have them.

“We couldn’t make it without them,” he said.