Laying pipe!
With some very good help
Two down, two more to go on this ditch. We have another HUGE ditch we are putting into pipe, but that will be a tad later.
It’s looking good.
So nice.
The help was pretty helpful, also. 🙂
The workload is shrinking!!! (Just not at the moment, but come spring—-
Are we going to be farming next spring? Hummm, I wonder.)
Your friend on a western Colorado farm,
Linda
Finally we are finished with all the gated pipe! What a long job. Although, to be fair we didn’t work at it steady, but here and there until the wind got to be too much or we got tired.
Then we would stop and go work on something else. Blade helped us lots. A thirteen year old boy really is a big help.
Thank heavens for 4-wheelers! To have to carry… by hand… all those pipe would have been over-whelming, although, when we started out farming Terry and I DID lay the pipe by hand.
Anyway, Thankfully we are finally done with the pipe. NOW next step is to mark out the alfalfa, clean the cement ditch, lay out the siphon tubes and start water! Once the water is started it won’t be turned off until harvest.
Twice a day every day (more times, if the water is short) we will change the water. Terry says moving water is just like milking a cow…twice a day no matter what! 🙂
Your friend on a western Colorado Farm,
Linda
Yesterday was ever so delightful! I hope yours was also.
Today we woke up to wind, which means it will blow all day and possibly blow in a storm. More than likely it will blow in a cold front, but that is okay, we are still doing ground work, nothing is planted yet, and no water.
ALTHOUGH!!!!!
The Uncompahgre Valley Water Users higher ups have decided that they WILL start the irrigation water today!
No April Fool’s either!
It will get to us by Friday or next Monday at the latest.
50% of normal. I would NOT want to be a ditch rider this year you can bet we are going to hear of water fights and uncivilized behavior when it comes to the water for the farms. All ready the subdivision people are complaining that they won’t have water (they do, they can use city water).
As I understand it, If we were over on the eastern slope around Sterling and Pueblo it wouldn’t be the subdivision people complaining, it would be the farmers also. The cities have all rights to the water FIRST.
But I’m not going there. The whole ‘water thing’ is just so emotional and frightening that I can’t really get my mind around it.
Terry and I will do what we have to do and be grateful that we have what we have. One never really knows what the rest of the growing season will bring, it could be normal.
Have a nice Monday everyone…we are off to lay pipe!
Linda
I was excused from work this day.
Told I wasn’t needed.
Said it would go faster now and I could stay at the house and get ‘stuff’ done there.
I didn’t complain.
He was right.
When I went up in the late after noon he was over half-way done.
He thinks he will finish up today…tomorrow at the latest.
Which is good, because we are supposed to have a rain storm Thursday(tomorrow) and snow of Saturday.
If he can get done today the rain will help settle the soil around the pipe and into the trench. After that we will know how much dirt we will have to bring up from the back side of the place to fill in what has settled.
Linda
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
Life on a Colorado Farm 