waste ditches | Life on a Colorado Farm

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.