Wednesday April 4, 2013

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Dayphoto

Terry and I spent the morning cleaning out the waste ditches yesterday. Then as I continued getting the rest of the ditches cleaned he came along with the 4240 and the blade making the ditch that carry the water from our field to the farm just below us.

All of our water comes from another farm(s) to us. After we use it then it goes on to the next farm then to the river and onto California.

I was asked how we siphon out of a pipe under ground. We don’t. The transmission pipe/ditch is just that….a huge ditch that brings the water onto our place. Our head gate is on our place but some peoples’ head gates are a mile or so above their place. The head gate is the beginning of the transmission pipe.

We are putting as much as we can under ground so the water stays weed free, seed free–safe from the sun. We still have sections of transmission ditches that are open (pipe is extremely expensive). We use siphon tubes out of smaller ditches, either made of dirt or cement. Then we use gated pipe for the rest of the place. Lots of ways to get water into the fields.

I also was asked if we practice crop rotation…YES we do! 🙂 We were green before green was cool!

Anyway, we always plant corn after pintos, sometimes alfalfa, but alfalfa is a five-year crop so once it is in the field it stays five years until it is old (showing signs of weeds). We plant pintos after corn or maybe alfalfa…always always working toward good soil maintenance. After all healthy soil is the most critical way of having healthy plants.

So moving on so you aren’t bored we heard the water was at Pea Green last night. That is 5 miles from us. Today we will finish the ditches, fix the gated pipe and then mark out the fields. We want to be ready for the water as soon as the head gate is unlocked!

Spring work is here!

Linda

Laying Pipe-Next Year Moving Water will be Great!

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Dayphoto

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

The Adventures of Fuzzy and Boomer on Friday — Back to Work

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Dayphoto

We are back to work! Hanging around and just doing what we want is now over, our work has begun. That’s what Mom told us yesterday as we headed out to help irrigate.

See we don’t farm with Dad. We stay with Mom wherever she is. Our job is helping Mom, always. Sometimes Boomer will go out some with Dad but Dad is always on a tractor or something and that is just not fun running alongside a big piece of equipment.

We ride (like Mom does) and then we work.

Boomer and I really like it.

We really like helping out too. There is so much to do. Sometimes there are mice to snap in two and sometimes not, but there are always smells to smell and for ME there is water to play in.

It’s getting a little harder every year to get OUT of the ditches, but I don’t have any trouble getting into them. Mom doesn’t like for me to get into the ditches anymore because I can’t get out very well. But I still do it — I just wait until she isn’t looking and I jump in.

The day before Dad made all the ditches on the place—first he made the main ditches, these are the ditches that carry the water to the fields from the head gate (the head gate takes the water out of the canal onto our place).

Then he made the waste ditches, these are the ditches that take the water away from the field and drop the water back into the canal so the next farm can use the water.

After that we had to wait for the ditch rider to open the head gate so we could begin work.

Work started at 6:00 last evening. We worked until 8:00 because there were so many weeds and burn trash in the ditches, but we made it.

Boomer and I helped. I even got into the water a couple of times which made Mom yell at me. She said the water was too full of trash and it would stick to my fur so I had to get out.

Geez!

Trash on fur is not a big deal.

But she made me get out.

It was rather hard to get out, so I hung with Mom looking for mice in the tubes while she dug out ends and started the tubes with water.

Dad had to work on the trash in the head gate and the transmission ditch, and then he came and helped Mom set tubes.

The trash WAS bad.

And the wind was bad. The wind kept blowing in other trash so we had to stay out and keep the water from flowing over the sides of the cement ditch for ever so long.

Boom and I really enjoyed it.

Mom and Dad said they were tired.

They worked all morning, then helped Evan move furniture into his new house and set up his new kitchen and then chased water all evening. The second they sat down in their chairs they were asleep.

Boomer and I were still good to go, but since the folks were so tired we decided maybe we wouldn’t chase Freddy Fox or any of the raccoons tonight or even get on the barking telephone system.

Around 11:00 Dad had to go back out in the wind to check tubes again to make sure they hadn’t trashed back up and stopped or the water was flowing over the sides of the cement ditch into the work fields.