Well, maybe not the water itself, but Mom and Dad sure are.

There is the headgate, you have to keep all the trash out of it,

sometimes Dad has to walk across the headgate on the tiny little board to put other ‘blocking’ boards in,

and sometimes Dad has to put down the side of the tiny walking board a screen to filter out the trash.

Trash is a huge part of keeping the water flowing.

Trash stops the water,

causes it to pool up and then will become a flood.  Trash makes Dad and mom athletic getting down and digging it out of the water.

Then there is putting in and removing the dams.  That is a dam you are seeing.

Dad uses several dams all along the ditches so the water isn’t just rushing by and causing some other sort of crisis somewhere else along the way.

At each dam, the water rises until there is enough water Mom and Dad can start the tubes.

Mom says you have to be fast or the water will rise so high that it will run over the side of the ditch and cause a flood.

The water coming out of the cement ditch into the tubes goes into little furrows that keep the water manageable.

Over time the furrow becomes imprinted with the water and won’t let the water run over into another row.

But in the Springtime, when everything is starting to ‘learn’ it’s way-of-being, Mom and Dad have to walk down the rows and make sure the water stays in its own row and doesn’t get greedy and try to take over its neighbor’s row.

The tools used on the water are shovels, rakes/forks (not all the time, but in the early Spring for sure), dams -metal and the

orange fiber material, siphon tubes, a wide variety of trash cleaners,

four-wheelers to get a person from here to there, and people.

Lots of bending and stooping and jumping over ditches and walking on scary boards…if water isn’t athletic, Mom and Dad sure are! 😊

Lots of work, but Mom says it keeps Dad and her young.

TLC Cai-Cai