Back, after a long weekend of irrigating. I know that some of you city dwellers may be asking how it could take all weekend to irrigate. 27 acres is why. Let me give you just a little taste of the Hell I call flood irrigation. It starts when the new neighbor who moved in from San Jose wanted to irrigate his pasture. He calls the local flood control/ irrigation district and orders three cubic feet of water per second to start at 5:30 am. The water tender opens the water gate at 5:30 sending the desired H20 down the ditch to points unknown to him, that's his job, he just opens the valve at the canal and goes to his next stop. It is the land owner who makes sure that the water goes through all the ditches that lead to his place so he may irrigate, sounds simple huh?
It is a relatively simple chore of closing the valves that divert the water flow to other ditches so you get the water you paid for. The first neighbor he flooded out was my father-in-law, who had just trenched all the water and electrical line to his barn and trenched out to the tail water ditch for the rain gutters on his barn. When the 3 feet of water came down his field it back flooded all the trenches in his barn and made a huge mess.
The next victim in the flooding was my friend Mark, the regular ditch tender who was moving cows over the weekend. His pasture had cattle on it and they stomped some new mud holes around his place.
Meanwhile back to our new friend from San Jose, he has been waiting for two days now and just has a trickle of water, he orders more water. The ditch tender opens the valve to let out 5 feet of water and whatever had not been flooded soon became a lagoon. That leads me back to my place. I live one field over from my new 'buddy'. When he finds out that he needs to do a little more that just order water and realizes that he is flooding everyone, he asks for help.
The new ditch tender shows him how to open the vavles and close the splash gates to direct the water to his field. Here is the problem, when he opens the valve that leads down my ditch, there is a tremendous amount of water backed up in the main ditch. There must have been 6 cubic feet of water coming through the ditch that is in my front yard. I have culverts in the ditch for my driveway and they can't take that amount of water. My front yard start to flood, that is where my septic system is. I call the water district guy and have him the water off until my 'buddy' can figure this out. The regular ditch tender, Mark, comes by the next morning to restore calm and show the city slicker what to do.
After my 'buddy' is done with his pasture, it is my turn. I ordered three feet of water and started at 5:30 Friday night and ended around 1:am Sunday. Checking the water involves the four wheeler and a shovel. I did get to use my new LED headlamp at night to make sure all the irrigation checks were getting watered and moving splash-gates. I am whooped by Sunday morning. I did make it to the 10:30 service at church and then went home to collapse on my couch.
I have yet to meet my buddy, I have been over there a time or two and have met the renter he has. But I believe I will tell him that they don't make an automatic timer for flood irrigation.
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