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Taking a job working in rice fields near Stuttgart. I'm not so sure it's a good idea. Probably get ripped off. Every job I've had in the past 5 years put me deeper and deeper in the hole.
Not sure I want to risk it.

$10/hr walking beans and get this...you carry each weed out of the field one at a time. Weird.

$1/gate for installing gates and removing them.

If anyone has done this shit before...tell me why I don't want to do it.

Probably have to carry the weeds out so they can compare their spray coverages to why certain weeds are growing certain places. A lot of farmers do it here, so they can try and find out why weeds like pigweed are growing in certain places in Roundup-REady beanfields. Just a thought. If it's under the table, you're at about $14.50 an hour, which ain't bad, but it doesn't seem like you could make much for the gate deal. Of course I've never seen a round-eye rice field, so what do I know?

And by August, walking beans will SUUUUUUCK big time. They'll be almost chest high, with morning glories and foot-tangling bullshit, and it's very hard to cross rows. You will be wore out from that shit. If it was in May or June, different story maybe.

Don't you have an engineering degree?
Why don't you look for a job in your field that won't put you in the hole more, pays more than $10/hr, and won't be as hard on your body?

Woody wrote:Don't you have an engineering degree?
Why don't you look for a job in your field that won't put you in the hole more, pays more than $10/hr, and won't be as hard on your body?

Why?
To be honest...I don't do ACAD and any entry level job I get would require it.
I planned my engineering career very poorly and made some mistakes.
Quitting General Electric is just one. I was in the manager training program and hated it so I shot myself in the foot and left.
Somewhere out there is a tiny black ball with my name on it.

aunt betty wrote:

Woody wrote:Don't you have an engineering degree?
Why don't you look for a job in your field that won't put you in the hole more, pays more than $10/hr, and won't be as hard on your body?

Why?
To be honest...I don't do ACAD and any entry level job I get would require it.
I planned my engineering career very poorly and made some mistakes.
Quitting General Electric is just one. I was in the manager training program and hated it so I shot myself in the foot and left.
Somewhere out there is a tiny black ball with my name on it.

Not true, you could be a lab tech/mechanical engineering technician or a test engineer and never touch modeling software.
I think you would enjoy the right testing position. Lots of them are destructive jobs where you do your very best to break things. And all of them are hands on.

Woody wrote:

aunt betty wrote:

Woody wrote:Don't you have an engineering degree?
Why don't you look for a job in your field that won't put you in the hole more, pays more than $10/hr, and won't be as hard on your body?

Why?
To be honest...I don't do ACAD and any entry level job I get would require it.
I planned my engineering career very poorly and made some mistakes.
Quitting General Electric is just one. I was in the manager training program and hated it so I shot myself in the foot and left.
Somewhere out there is a tiny black ball with my name on it.

Not true, you could be a lab tech/mechanical engineering technician or a test engineer and never touch modeling software.
I think you would enjoy the right testing position. Lots of them are destructive jobs where you do your very best to break things. And all of them are hands on.

Put me working with an Instron Tensile Test machine and Id be in heaven.

Back to rice gates.
The guy explained it but in Arkansas muttering English.
Can someone explain exactly what a gate is and maybe show pics of some?
The way I understand it...
A gate is a tarp layed on a trench and weighed down with dirt in such a way as it creates a small dam. Is this right?

aunt betty wrote:Back to rice gates.
The guy explained it but in Arkansas muttering English.
Can someone explain exactly what a gate is and maybe show pics of some?
The way I understand it...
A gate is a tarp layed on a trench and weighed down with dirt in such a way as it creates a small dam. Is this right?

Never heard of a gate in rice production. Every check or levee has a box that you slide boards into to control water depth on each section of the field. They might call them gates in Arkansas. We call them rice boxes out here.

Bootlipkiller wrote:

aunt betty wrote:Back to rice gates.
The guy explained it but in Arkansas muttering English.
Can someone explain exactly what a gate is and maybe show pics of some?
The way I understand it...
A gate is a tarp layed on a trench and weighed down with dirt in such a way as it creates a small dam. Is this right?

Never heard of a gate in rice production. Every check or levee has a box that you slide boards into to control water depth on each section of the field. They might call them gates in Arkansas. We call them rice boxes out here.

I know what that is. This...

The way I get it is the field has a ditch around the perimeter.
The trenches and levees in the field all tie into the ditch. The tarp/gates are damming up little 3-4" deep trenches that irrigate/drain the field.

Maybe I should just talk to Cason Byers.

aunt betty wrote:

Bootlipkiller wrote:

aunt betty wrote:Back to rice gates.
The guy explained it but in Arkansas muttering English.
Can someone explain exactly what a gate is and maybe show pics of some?
The way I understand it...
A gate is a tarp layed on a trench and weighed down with dirt in such a way as it creates a small dam. Is this right?

Never heard of a gate in rice production. Every check or levee has a box that you slide boards into to control water depth on each section of the field. They might call them gates in Arkansas. We call them rice boxes out here.

I know what that is. This...

No that's not what I'm talking about. That's a gate but you won't find it in a rice field.

Woody wrote:Don't you have an engineering degree?
Why don't you look for a job in your field that won't put you in the hole more, pays more than $10/hr, and won't be as hard on your body?

because he's a gypsy hunter looking for an in somewhere

Bootlipkiller wrote:

aunt betty wrote:

Bootlipkiller wrote:

aunt betty wrote:Back to rice gates.
The guy explained it but in Arkansas muttering English.
Can someone explain exactly what a gate is and maybe show pics of some?
The way I understand it...
A gate is a tarp layed on a trench and weighed down with dirt in such a way as it creates a small dam. Is this right?

Never heard of a gate in rice production. Every check or levee has a box that you slide boards into to control water depth on each section of the field. They might call them gates in Arkansas. We call them rice boxes out here.

I know what that is. This...

No that's not what I'm talking about. That's a gate but you won't find it in a rice field.

I have flooded a rice field before but it was in the fall.

I'm taking about setting up a field to grow it in the spring, starting with the farmer trenching and doing the levees. Start with a precision leveled field and make it into a rice field.
I'm trying to take a crash course on rice.

What it the machine called that does the levee/trenches?

aunt betty wrote:

Bootlipkiller wrote:

aunt betty wrote:

Bootlipkiller wrote:

aunt betty wrote:Back to rice gates.
The guy explained it but in Arkansas muttering English.
Can someone explain exactly what a gate is and maybe show pics of some?
The way I understand it...
A gate is a tarp layed on a trench and weighed down with dirt in such a way as it creates a small dam. Is this right?

Never heard of a gate in rice production. Every check or levee has a box that you slide boards into to control water depth on each section of the field. They might call them gates in Arkansas. We call them rice boxes out here.

I know what that is. This...

No that's not what I'm talking about. That's a gate but you won't find it in a rice field.

I have flooded a rice field before but it was in the fall.

I'm taking about setting up a field to grow it in the spring, starting with the farmer trenching and doing the levees. Start with a precision leveled field and make it into a rice field.
I'm trying to take a crash course on rice.

They must do something different there because our fields are level and have a slight slope. They start flooding from the high sides and use the checks and rice boxes to control the water with a drain on the low side of the field. What your describing sounds like a method of flooding a row crop not a flat rice field.

I'm confused too. The guy is a methhead and can't explain how to open a box...how he runs an ag-crew is beyond me. I'll learn what he does, improve the method, hire me some help, and do what he does only better.

Rice check with a rice box. You just drop pre cut boards in the box or take them out to adjust the water level. You have to put a wedge in to keep the boards from floating out.

Bootlipkiller wrote:

aunt betty wrote:

Bootlipkiller wrote:

aunt betty wrote:

Bootlipkiller wrote:

aunt betty wrote:Back to rice gates.
The guy explained it but in Arkansas muttering English.
Can someone explain exactly what a gate is and maybe show pics of some?
The way I understand it...
A gate is a tarp layed on a trench and weighed down with dirt in such a way as it creates a small dam. Is this right?

Never heard of a gate in rice production. Every check or levee has a box that you slide boards into to control water depth on each section of the field. They might call them gates in Arkansas. We call them rice boxes out here.

I know what that is. This...

No that's not what I'm talking about. That's a gate but you won't find it in a rice field.

I have flooded a rice field before but it was in the fall.

I'm taking about setting up a field to grow it in the spring, starting with the farmer trenching and doing the levees. Start with a precision leveled field and make it into a rice field.
I'm trying to take a crash course on rice.

They must do something different there because our fields are level and have a slight slope. They start flooding from the high sides and use the checks and rice boxes to control the water with a drain on the low side of the field. What your describing sounds like a method of flooding a row crop not a flat rice field.

Here's a picture from above.
The "contouring" is the levees and ditches I'm talking about.

There's a gate here.

One here.

To let the water out...we pull the gates.

Are you talking about the small ditch on both sides of the check?

Bootlipkiller wrote:Are you talking about the small ditch on both sides of the check?

I don't know. You tell me.
I'm the student.
We grow CORN here. Growing season too short for rice.

Our fields are set up to drain water. Theirs are set up to HOLD it in. Backwards assed rice farming bullshit.

Betty. It's $10 an hour. For that rate, you're not SUPPOSED to know a damn thing about it. If you did, you would be getting more than $10 an hour. You're barely above the Laborer's Helper position on this job. Stop engineering it, enjoy your time off, and then go down there and learn it. I will GUARANTEE you that you will be driven around and shown what to do, which will take appx 1 hour. Then you'll know what to do.

assateague wrote:Betty. It's $10 an hour. For that rate, you're not SUPPOSED to know a damn thing about it. If you did, you would be getting more than $10 an hour. You're barely above the Laborer's Helper position on this job. Stop engineering it, enjoy your time off, and then go down there and learn it. I will GUARANTEE you that you will be driven around and shown what to do, which will take appx 1 hour. Then you'll know what to do.

Or you can flounder around in a duck forum making numerous posts

I gotta decide if I want to live in a Stuttgart motel.
Driving 1200 miles to see if I can even handle it bothers me. I'm not exactly a laborer. Its piece-work on the gates so if I fail...it will suck. Stranded in Stuttgart is not the plan.

That sounds like shitty piece work. For $1 each, you better be able to do at least 15 an hour, and from what you describe, it sounds like there aren't enough of them for that, and that even if there were, there's no way you're going to be doing 15 an hour.

aunt betty wrote:I gotta decide if I want to live in a Stuttgart motel.
Driving 1200 miles to see if I can even handle it bothers me. I'm not exactly a laborer. Its piece-work on the gates so if I fail...it will suck. Stranded in Stuttgart is not the plan.

Duck hunting rights come with it AB?