Adventures in Irrigating

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We opened the last ditch on the place yesterday…what a mess.

The cement ditch had tons of trash in it, but that was to be expected.

The new dirt ditch (which we made after deciding not to buy more extremely expensive gated pipe) is holding water and sealing up nicely.

Where we had the problem was under the old apricot tree that escaped the fire.

We didn’t even THINK about there being a problem with that ditch….it’s the last ditch on the place, taking the water to the alfalfa hill and then on down to the next farm.

So here we were working away on getting the trash out of the cement ditch, starting the tubes, digging out the ends…..everything going along as expected.

We rode down to check the new ditch out.

Good.  The water was going on down to the alfalfa hill, the ditch was sealing and imprinting.  We got the trash out …

Looking good

Evening was starting to come on in a hurry so we headed on down to check the alfalfa ditch and start the furrows (earth dams here and digging out ends)

When we saw a LAKE in the road!  And the water starting to sub over into the potential pinto bean field!

Who would have thought….a ground squirrel had made a wonderful, delightful, very nice home in the side of the alfalfa ditch!!!

It took some doing but we finally got all 8 holes filled in and covered up.  The squirrel was seen chattering at us a couple of times.  Floods are bad news for anyone to have to live through.

The squirrel is alive and well, it moved on over to a thicket and started a new house in a much drier area.

We have been rather cool to cold here for the last three days.  Temperatures have dropped into the low 20s, it was 24* this morning when I went out to let the chickens out for the day.  I think its supposed to start a gradual warm up tomorrow.

April sure was an up and down sort of month for temperatures….reaching 92* one day.

May for us is usually warmer, and a little steadier weather wise…I try to plant my garden the week of Mother’s Day. (Although, it can still freeze here, even as late as in June.)

Thanks for stopping by!

Linda

 

 

17 thoughts on “Adventures in Irrigating”

  1. Aah. The fun and trials of farming!!

    Daryl is back out to WY for more time “farming”. At the last minute I decided to stay home and prep for graduation in 20 days!

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  3. Hi Linda, We trimmed trees (to keep the darn squirrels off of our roof) yesterday.. Big job –and it scares me when George is so high on the ladder. But–it’s done!!!!

    Glad you finally got all of the ditches in good shape. Wow–talk about a huge job…

    Cannot believe the crazy weather we all are having/have had. Right now though we are having a very nice and not too hot week…. yeah!!!!

    Read my blog about my Bluebirds.
    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  7. Who woulda thunk?!! Silly ground squirrel! We had one help itself to water from an in ground irrigation line. We joked that the squirrel wanted to be the first on the block with indoor plumbing! I’m glad you were able to find and fix the problem.

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  9. So irrigation as in any other farming activity has a mind of its own and can do nasty things.
    Your weather is similar to ours. We have freezing over night about half the time. Our garden will go in the same time as yours.

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  14. Does anything ever go as planned? Good thing you didn’t start the water flowing and then decide to go to town or something off the farm. Glad you got it worked out. The sunset pic is wonderful.

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  16. I lived in Trinidad Colorado for 7 years. I too spent the day in my garden for Mothers day. Now we live in Tucson Arizona and by Mothers Day it is simply too hot to garden, well anything in the heat of the day at least. I do miss my Mothers day gardening spree. Thanks for sharing your farm with me…..OosahhSamantha

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