transmission pipe | Life on a Colorado Farm

Terry is planning on laying more transmission pipe this spring. He wanted to lay it last fall but we were too wet. The whole winter was wet until just now. So off he went to hand-dig up the culvert under the farm road, then back to get the tractor with the loader on it.

Boomer and I walked up later to see how he was doing….”Finished!” he replied.

We followed him back to the yard and asked if he would like to go with us (meaning myself, Boomer and Fuzzy) to go look at the cows!

In just seconds we were on our way–

There is one cow with outstanding markings–she is all black except for her long whitetail….she is behind the two white cows, she is the one with the horns

We saw lots of cows looking just like this 🙂

Terry checked out a new Momma cow–he wanted to see where she had her calf hid.

Hiding a new calf in the marsh land isn’t a good idea. So if he could stir up the calf, the mom would take it on to higher and dryer ground.

I didn’t get a good photo of the calf and mom moving off.

We saw two more calves. These two are a few days older than the other one. The mom’s are getting tired of the (self imposed) nursery so are starting to take the kids out and about more.

The herd is looking good. I’m sure Mr. Davis and his daughter, Teresa, are pleased with the results so far.

Tomorrow I’ll show you the other creatures we saw along the way. Today the air and the sun feels just like yesterday–Spring has arrived. I even heard a flock of Red-Winged Black Birds while we were up there. Delightful birds.

They say another rain/snow storm is supposed to come in Wednesday and our temperatures to drop way down. Still…no matter what…we are on the other side of winter now.

My heart goes out to all of you still trapped in the huge massive snow and freezing temperatures back east. To have a warm up would be a delightful gift to all of you winter weary souls! Magic Thoughts for Spring to find you soon!

Your friend,

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.