On a day too wet to harvest soybeans, the Russell brothers drove a Ford pickup through military security and went to work repairing their combine. An F-18 fighter jet shot overhead with a sound, as though the sky ripped open and dropped onto a runway nearby.
That's how it is when the family farm is in the middle of a Navy air base.
The brothers harvest corn, soybeans and milo from fields near the runways and weapons compound of Patuxent River Naval Air Station in St. Mary's County, Md. It's not exactly peaceful, and it's a little strange to see a tractor puttering through a base where cutting-edge aerospace technology is tested.
But it makes sense for the Navy to host this farm: The fields ensure a clear sight line from control tower to runway. The crops minimize the risk of fire around the weapons compound, and they are safer than woods or dry brush in case of crash landings. The fields even help keep deer and birds away from planes.
It takes only one turkey vulture flying the wrong way to bring down a $40 million jet -- and it's not easy to keep birds away from the base known as Pax River, with its 6,800 acres of land jutting into the Chesapeake Bay. Kyle Rambo, director of the base's conservation division, spends much time and energy trying to scare off birds and safeguard pilots.
It saves the Navy about $50,000 a year to have a farm there, Rambo said. Besides, he said, "it's extremely rich, productive farmland. It's been farmed for more than 300 years."
Nationally, about 85,000 acres on Navy bases are leased by private farmers, generating almost $2 million a year for the federal government and saving about $6 million a year in mowing and maintenance costs, according to the Navy. Those funds can go to conservation programs on the bases, such as a migratory bird study at Pax River.
Andrew Russell said his family has been farming in St. Mary's for centuries. Brian, Andrew, Glen, and Leroy Russell grew up on a tobacco farm, in a family with 13 children. As adults, the four of them formed Russell Brothers LLC, and after accepting a financial settlement through the Maryland tobacco buyout program, they began looking for new crops. Now they raise grain, cattle, and nursery plants.
But it is getting harder to find land, they said. So leasing from the Navy, at Pax River and its Webster Field annex, makes sense.
"It's so much land in one spot," Brian Russell said.
"And there's not the development pressure on the base that there would be on a private farm," Andrew Russell added.
The Russells have farms in two St. Mary's communities and lease a few other spots. But the acreage at Pax River is by far their largest, and it costs only a few thousand dollars a year in rent.
So they tolerate some hassles. Like the pages of federal-government fine print that specifies what, where, and how high. They cannot grow certain vegetables that might attract deer. They cannot grow corn too close to the runway. Their milo has to be a certain type that birds hate.
They had to get a map to find their way to the slivers and patches of land they can farm between runways and hangars. They had to get military security clearance. And they had to learn how to radio the tower to get clearance to chug across runways in their combine. Everyone has been very polite and patient with them, they said. But still, "it makes you nervous at first," Andrew Russell said.
"I'm still nervous," Brian Russell said, laughing. "Just afraid you're going to end up where you're not supposed to be."
They have to make sure no rocks or clumps of dirt are stuck in the tires before they go onto the landing strip -- nothing that could get sucked into a jet engine.
A big plane in the distance, beyond their soybeans, is so top-secret that they have been told not to get anywhere near it or its armed guards.
"We don't know what it is, and we don't want to know," Brian Russell said.
The brothers hope for another five-year contract when the current one runs out in about two years. Bids are judged not only by amount but also by farming techniques, Rambo said; the Russells recently won a statewide soil-conservation award.
Another plane dropped from the clouds with a roar. "You kind of forget about that after a while," Brian Russell said. He wonders what it is like for the pilots, soaring up there over the bay; he has never been in a plane. "It must be beautiful."