Farming Practices and Crop Diversity

Here at the Mallet, some land is leased on the fringes of our acreage to farmers. They grow crops appropriately suited to our region, harvest them, and sell them to a gin. We then receive a portion of the profits from the crops. Learn more below!

As true for most of Texas, the ranching of this region of West Texas known as the South Plains

was slowly replaced with farmers and cultivated fields, carving up its vast stretches of grassland.

Between 1890 to 1920, farming families migrated in droves to the South Plains, considered the

new “Promised Land” for fertile soils and bountiful harvests. The great underground Ogallala

Aquifer and the advent of windmills and pumps to tap this seemingly unlimited water source

made it truly the Promised Land for so many.

Wanting to cash in and raise money for the Mallet Ranch, DeVitt hired sales agents who ended

up selling 5,743 acres of the Ranch in the 1920s to farmers. However, the Ranch received most

of that acreage back in foreclosures due to the lack of payment because of the Great Depression

of the 1930s. Certain fringes of the Mallet Ranch that had been turned into cultivated lands by

these early farmers is still being farmed today under the name of DeVitt-Jones Farms, and other

acreage that is leased directly from the Mallet Ranch by farmers and stock raisers for growing

various crops, including cotton, milo, wheat, and sorghum.