We have decided that, to ease the work-load for next year, all of the transmission ditches need to be put underground.

Transmission ditches only carry the water from one place to the next place, they don’t have to be open ditches for a person to use siphon tubes to water the actual fields.

The time in managing the open ditch is huge, you have to make the ditch, keep the ditch clean of trash and weeds and deep enough, with enough slant, so the water will flow.  It’s an all season job, which sometimes gets away from us.  The water, with the weed seeds gets a start and then this is what you get.

A mess.

The mess takes up some of the water for themselves and the sun takes more, so by August how many tubes or gates you get to use starts to shrink.

We have several transmission ditches.

Gradually, every year (pipe costs lots of money) the transmission ditches have been going underground.

The first two years Terry dug the ditches by hand, last year he rented a backhoe and dug it that way. But this year, after putting pencil to paper, we hired Troy Wells to come out and dig this ditch.

(Besides I don’t think – at our ages – we should be doing all the work!)

Terry got everything ready so all that had to be done was the digging.

The work was excellent!

All the top soil (because we are going down a  road-the one that goes to our head gate and to the upper end of our place) was put on one side of the trench, the good farming soil on the other side. The sides were squared and the bottom flat…very little hand work had to be done.  Just at the top where the transmission pipe connects with the first artery of that system.

And that WAS a job!

The it was up to us.  Get a pipe, lay in the trench, get another pipe, glue them together, make sure the fall of the land is still good, if not take a shovel and shovel the spot until perfect, put another pipe in,

(Jump out so a picture or two could be taken.  But don’t do it too often or the “Boss” will get upset for goofing off!)

Then…THANK HEAVENS FOR BIG MACHINES…Terry would start dumping the good farm soil back into the trench.  Here the  test is to make sure the dirt lands on TOP of the pipe, not on one side or the other causing it to roll.

A good job!  The pipe did not roll and we did not have to get back in and shovel off the dirt and re-align the pipe.

Thank goodness!

We had lots of help!

I guess you know what we are going to be doing the rest of today and the rest of this week.

Have a great Tuesday everyone!

Linda