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May 25, 1951 — September 30, 2021
Leonard E. Wiggins Jr. passed away on September 30, 2021 at Kingwood Medical Center in Kingwood, Texas.
Leonard was born on May 25, 1951, in Brownsville, Texas.
He was preceded in death by his maternal and paternal grandparents. He was also preceded in death by his mother, Silvia Orason Buck and two brothers, Frank M. Buck Jr. and Darryl Ivan Buck.
Leonard is survived by his father, Frank M. Buck Sr. of Bayou Vista; two sisters, Elizabeth Buck Waguespack of Houma and Ethel Buck Cantu of Abbeville; two brothers, Berry M. Wiggins of Gretna and Lonnie J. Wiggins of Baton Rouge; and former wife, Bonnie Wiggins. He is also survived by nine nieces and nephews; five great nieces and nephews; and numerous cousins.
There will be a celebration of life service on Friday, November 5, 2021 from 12:00 p.m. until 2:00 p.m. at the Clarion Inn of Morgan City, 520 Roderick St., Morgan City, Louisiana, 70380. Family and friends are invited to attend. Leonard will then be laid to his final resting place in a private service to be held on November 9, 2021 in North Louisiana.
In lieu of flowers, the family request donations be made to the Alzheimer’s Association by any of the following ways; direct mail to Alzheimer’s Association, 225 North Michigan Avenue, floor 17, Chicago, IL, 60621, directly online at act.alz.org; or they can be mailed to his sister Elizabeth Waguespack at 248 Madio Drive, Houma, Louisiana, 70364, and one large donation will be mailed directly in memory of Leonard E. Wiggins.

The LSU AgCenter hosted a sugar cane field day at Dugas Farm, Inc. on Oct. 20 in Assumption Parish. The field day was supported by the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation.
The Taylor Foundation awarded a grant to the LSU AgCenter to fund a four-year research project on reducing nutrient runoff from crop fields. Forty-two event attendees were provided with unique learning opportunities and hands-on demonstrations that highlighted the benefits of the best management practices being researched on this project.
Many presentations emphasized the factors that contribute to the sustainability practices of an industry and the responsibility of agriculturalists to make a positive change. Among several presentations and guest speakers, field tours were given of the practices that are currently being tested on small plots.
Keith Dugas houses the sugar cane model farm operation in Napoleonville and enjoys his role in this project.
“I get to see firsthand what works and what doesn’t, and I also get to work with a lot of good researchers’ students,” he said. “It is a lot of hard work to collect all of the data, and I appreciate what they are doing and that I get to stand beside them.”
A variety of topics and management practices were featured at the event.
“The biggest success I see is the variable rate nitrogen and using the GreenSeeker technology,” Dugas said. “I have been using this technology for two years on my farm and I see great benefits in using it.”
Due to market fluctuations and availability of resources, the prices of nitrogen are predicted to be high for the upcoming year.
“Not every year is going to be a good year,” Dguas said. “I would advise any farmer to try implementing best management practices in their operations because the benefits that I have seen on my farm outweigh the risks. And where sustainability is concerned, the more we can do to preserve our land, the better off we will be.”
Lisa Fultz, a soil microbiologist with the LSU AgCenter, along with other researchers on this project share a common goal of ensuring a productive and sustainable future of Louisiana agriculture.
“One of the things that we are trying to do is to take a good measurement of inputs and outputs from the cropping systems and try to reduce the differences,” she said. “We are ultimately trying to make sure that inputs are staying in the field and not overapplied and are not lost, which is financially beneficial.”
This project has seen many successes, and Fultz is excited about the future of this research.
“Working with producers and implementing best management practices on large-scale operations is something to look forward to in the next few years,” she said. “The best management practices that we have researched so far provide incredible benefits to the producer and we would love to see producers across the state reap those benefits.”

Fabacher Road, which runs west for several miles from La. 91 near Iota is one of the few reminders of the settlement founded in 1871 by the man some claim to be the pioneer of the modern rice industry.
Little remains to mark just where the Fabacher community was, which will make it difficult if you want to look for the fortune supposedly buried there.
The monstrous ghost guarding it may also cause a problem.
In 1871 Franz Fabacher, his wife Magdelena Frey, and their six children, along with Zeno Huber and about 60 other Germans, moved to a stretch of land said to be of little value on Prairie Faquetaique.
Rice farmers at that time grew what was called “Providence rice,” because they planted the crop and let Providence provide.
The colonists who settled Fabacher’s so-called “German Colony,” decided to give Providence a hand by building reservoirs to collect rain water that could be used to irrigate the crops.
That was the beginning of rice culture as we know it in south Louisiana, but either Franz Fabacher didn’t capitalize on it, or maybe he just didn’t like farming.
He sold all of his property and moved back to New Orleans in 1878, taking his 19 -year-old son Joseph with him. But Joseph liked the prairie life and — according to one account — kept running away from New Orleans, until his father finally allowed him to move back to the prairie.
It was apparently a good idea. The St. Landry Democrat of Sept. 18, 1880 reported:
“At the lower end of Faquetaïque Prairie, at what is usually called ‘German Settlement’ the land has always been considered completely worthless. But this year about 4,600 barrels of rice will be produced in that neighborhood and within a very small compass, not extending up the prairie which is quite narrow here — not more than three or four miles.
"This rice in the 'rough’ will net about four dollars per barrel. So we have here a small neighborhood where they used to produce absolutely nothing for sale, a revenue of $16,000.
"The rice lands in this neighborhood … once considered not only worthless but a nuisance, are now the most valuable: and it will not be long before they cannot be bought for any reasonable price.” Sixteen thousand 1880 dollars would be about a half-million today.
Two years later, in 1882, Joseph Fabacher became the first farmer to grow what is known as “upland rice,” irrigated by rain water reservoirs.
That year’s crop turned a good profit, and Fabacher used the money to add 162 acres to his farm. It would eventually grow to more than 600 acres.
In 1885, Fabacher was the first to drill a deep water well to irrigate his crop.
That also proved successful and by 1893 he had three wells that could bring up fresh water 24 hours a day to be sent into the fields by a series of canals.
When the Midland-Eunice Railroad was completed in 1894, Fabacher built a warehouse next to the railroad tracks and opened a rice storage and shipping business, sending the local crop to be milled in Eunice and Crowley and sold around the world.
He made a lot of money, but the old story doesn’t say whether he was the one who buried the fabled fortune.
It could have been one of his neighbors, and it might even have been pirates who roamed across the prairies from time to time.
An 1896 newspaper tells the tale:
“Searchers for a supposed hidden treasure have been operating in the wood of this vicinity lately with supernatural results. This is the story of one of them, a well-known citizen. He began to dig hard by a massive oak tree at a spot where his secret information led him to expect a rich reward, when lo! and behold, the tree, notwithstanding there was no breath of air, began to vibrate until its topmost branches touched the ground compelling the man to retreat.
“While pondering over this strange phenomenon and trying to reconcile it to natural philosophy, with awful dismay he saw approaching him a hideous, uncouth monster of an unknown species and gigantic proportions, with blazing eyes and foamy mouth ready to devour him.
"The presence of mind of our worthy citizen did not forsake him, however, nor did his pedal extremities.”
He ran like the wind that was shaking the trees, never to return and never to divulge his “secret information.”
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

The Rev. Herbert Bennerfield III conducts a Mass for All Souls Day on Tuesday at St. Joseph Catholic Church's cemetery in Patterson. All Saints Day was Monday, a day for the blessing of the graves. All Souls Day, also known as the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, is a time to remember those who have died and to pray for them. Christians around the world observe All Souls Day by praying and decorating the graves of loved ones.

The Review/Bill Decker