Ground was broken for this project with “obstruction removal” September 18. These photos are from September 25, eight days into it. This is early morning as Brett brought the ripper out again, this time going mostly east-west.
I had been asked if NRCS could bring a crew to film while some of their personnel and I were interviewed for an in-house video they wanted to create. I said sure. The crew set up shades, screens, reflectors, and two cameras and were here about three hours.
I learned a few things from the interviews and discussion. I hadn’t thought about NRCS being a voluntary agency as opposed to a regulatory one. That means that we, the clients, volunteer to have them come to our farms. We have asked for help and they provide it. In our case they have provided all the engineering assistance and the request for funding.
In the meantime Brett was still working.
Dan had borrowed a larger chain saw from our son and needed to finish cutting the tree that was in the way of truck access for the irrigation supplies that would be coming.
Close-up of the ring-rollers pulled behind the disc.
Phase 1 of this project was Obstruction Removal which I described in the last post.
You’ve probably heard about “Call before you dig” There is a number to call to make sure that there is nothing underground to worry about–gas, power, phone, water lines. You are supposed to allow a couple of days for the various companies or utilities to give you the all clear. Brett took care of this and marked the corer of the property as directed.
He felt comfortable going ahead with the concrete removal before this approval because that concrete had been there for so long. Brett started to disc with the stubble disc (large blades farther apart), but found that the dallisgrass made it a challenge. He came back with a skid steer tractor with a mower. Dan had been mowing but Brett’s mower set up went a lot faster than what we have. Then he was ready to continue discing after a bit more prep.
Brett used the excavator to drop the culvert from the south end of the barn over the fence and away from the field where he would be working.
Dan and Brett used their respective tractors to work on the ditch at the north end of the property.
Dan pulled out the structures he had made to block and direct water while Brett broke down the berm and filled in the ditch.
Then Brett continued discing with the stubble disc.
After that he ripped going in a north-south direction.
The ripper has three stout teeth that are buried in the earth when they are lowered.
This is how the field looked after discing and ripping.
Dan had more tree work to do so that Brett could get his equipment close enough to the fenceline.
After ripping Brett brought the smaller disc with ring rollers.
It makes the field a lot smoother.
The sheep have been locked out of the pasture, They were happy to get a continued supply of green leaves as long as Dan was still trimming trees.
A few weeks ago I wrote Part 1 of Pasture and Irrigation Renovation. I ended that post with the sheep coming in from the pasture for the last time and a lot of heavy equipment in their place. A lot went on for a couple of weeks and then there was a lull. I have to go back and find the photos I took at each step.
There was still more work for us (Dan) to do. Here he is removing the wood and stakes we had used to make the ditch more functional near the barn and taking out the culvert.
Before work began we were asked to hold a meeting with the contractors where we could all listen to a representative of the tribal people who used to live in the area. He showed photos of the cultural items that one might find when soil is disturbed and talked about procedures if something was found.
The first job was to remove the old cement foundation that ran north to south over 3/4 of our property. We suspect it was the floor of an old barn–I don’t know what else it would have been. That would have been a big barn and maybe someday I’ll be able to talk to a local history buff who knows what this was. It doesn’t really matter–it’s just that we have always had to work around it. Part of it was broken apart to put the original irrigation ditch through and, even though grass will grow on top in the winter, it dries out in summer and the desirable pasture plants don’t grow there. NRCS calls this job “obstruction removal”.
Brett is the contractor with the heavy equipment. He first scraped the layer of dirt and grass off the top of the cement. Most of the concrete was only 2″ to 3″ inches thick and a lot of it broke into smaller crumbly pieces . The borders were a lot larger however.
Brett used the excavator to scoop up chunks of broken concrete.
We found that a clay pipe ran the length of the concrete.
Brett used the teeth on the track loader to rake through the dirt and find the concrete chunks.
The chunks were loaded into a truck for removal to a place where they’d get broken up even more for use in road bed material.
Eventually the pile of dirt that was scraped off the top was incorporated back into the area where it had been.
While Brett was working on this part, Dan spread the rest of the composted manure pile.
This part of the job took about three days using all this equipment.
This will be a multi-part story probably with other stories mixed in. This project began about 4 years ago when I taught a weaving class and we were talking about irrigation and field work. I was probably complaining about the difficulty of irrigating properly with our old worn out ditches and the uneven growth of the pasture. One of the students is an engineer with NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) and she suggested that I ask for help (engineering and money) from NRCS because that is what they do.
NRCS personnel helped develop a plan to renovate the pasture and the irrigation. It doesn’t make sense to do one without the other. The proposal was submitted with high hopes that it would be selected. It was not. We tried the next year and just missed being included in that year’s funding. This spring our plan was approved, and is partially funded through EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program).
Before work began there was a lot of preliminary work for us to do. That fell on Dan’s shoulders. First he took down all the internal fences.
Then he started mowing…and mowing…and mowing. That tall grass is mostly dallisgrass that has taken over a good part of the pasture. It can grow 5′ tall and the sheep can’t keep up with it once it takes off in the summer. The sheep can’t (won’t) eat it as it gets coarser through the growing season. It crowds out everything else and is dormant in the winter. Our tractor isn’t strong enough to mow it at ground level when it gets this tall. Dan has to go over each section at least a couple of times.
Another task was to make an opening in the fence along the road so the heavy equipment had access. That started with trimming back the tree here. The fence on the south half of field was built by the county when, in 1971 the canal was put in (or enlarged?), and Solano County was deeded the triangular sliver of land along the road. We weren’t going to take down that part of the fence.
Looking into the pasture from the road. That post is the corner of the county owned sliver of land.
We don’t have a chainsaw large enough to take the whole tree down, so the larger job had to wait until we could borrow a chainsaw from Matt. In the meantime Dan had to be careful about the lower part of the tree branches because there was a lot of fence wire embedded where the tree had grown around it.
Brett, the contractor, was able to drive his truck in to start leaving equipment.
Our little Kubota tractor seemed dwarfed by some of the large equipment that eventually showed up.
Dan made a platform that fits on the front of the bucket so that he can carry more branches than he could without it. The tractor is hidden behind branches.
More equipment being delivered.
I thought I’d try out the equipment.
The equipment came in on a Friday and work would start Monday. We put panels where the fence was removed so we could let the sheep out for the weekend. Once work started the sheep would not have access to grazing for a very long time.
This was only three weeks ago and it seems like it’s been much longer. I have a lot of catching up to do for this blog.
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