Tag Archives: sustainable-agriculture

Pasture and Irrigation Renovation – Part 9

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I wrote the last post about this project 9 days ago. The crew had removed the old standpipe at the northwest corner of the pasture and replaced it with a new concrete box. When we irrigate the box will fill with water and create pressure to force water into the rest of the system.

In the meantime we were concerned with getting seed on the pasture at the best time. Michael had finished putting up borders, even though the irrigation pipeline work would disturb the upper end of the field. We needed all of that work to be finished before seeding. I had ordered the seed mix from a company in Tracy, about an hour and a half from here. I said that we’d pick it up to save on shipping cost and to have it here when Michael was ready for it. This time of year farmers are trying to get the field work finished before it rains a lot and they can’t get on the fields at all.

The day after the irrigation work was done in the corner we drove to Tracy to pick up the seed we had ordered. This photo is the warehouse there. There was some kind of communication problem between the order desk and the warehouse. Our order was wrong. I had paid for 350 pounds of seed but there was only 64 pounds there. The people at the seed company said they’d get the seed to us on Wednesday of the next week. That was the day before we were to leave on a 5 day trip. (That will be in the next blog post.)

The next morning I took these photos (above and below) of Michael smoothing out the edges of the field.

Skip ahead five days. The irrigation crew planned to come out on the 15th. We left that morning for Arizona. I asked my friends who were going to farm sit to take photos of the progress for me.

The crew spread the pipe out in the proper location. Then there was a lot of digging. They used this excavator at the northwest corner.They used a trencher for most of the lines.

The pipe that runs east-west in front of the blackberries has one T to send water south to the other east-west pipeline.

This is the rest of the pipeline at the north end in front of the blackberries.

This photo shows what the valves look like. They will be at ground level.

Here is that first east-west pipeline completed.

Pasture and irrigation Renovation – Part 6

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The last post ended with land leveling on October 18. Pipe and other supplies had been delivered October 16 but we had to wait for Brett’s work to be finished before starting anything else. The next two parts of this project were to install the irrigation system (Hunter from the irrigation company) and to create borders and seed the pasture (Michael with the field equipment). Initially we thought the pipeline work would be next and we would finish with the rest of the field work. Michael talked to Hunter about the best order of operation here. We were getting worried about weather. It was important to get this work done before there was too much rain that would stall the work. Also both of them have other much bigger jobs that they are trying to finish while the weather holds. I left it to them to work out the best way to accomplish this. Hunter and Michael went to school about the same time, along with my son, Chris. (In fact, Hunter and Chris were on the same rugby team for a season, and Michael’s mom and I carpooled at times to get the kids to school.)

Michael brought a tractor over on October 24. He and Dan and I had walked the field and determined that part of the field could use another discing. That is where the concrete had been. When leveling, that area seemed to have been scraped but left a surface that wasn’t as good for creating the borders and seeding.

Michael had one of his employees disc that portion of the field to help loosen it up.

The next day Dan and I picked up more chunks of concrete that had surfaced. Over the last couple of weeks we had picked up a lot of this that was scattered throughout the field.

Before Hunter could do the first part of the irrigation work Dan had to remove the fence in the northwest corner of the property.

This is the view from the field to the northwest.

The view from outside the field looking to the east. This is part of the SID (Solano Irrigation District) system. There is a metal gate at the bottom of that concrete structure that lets the water into our ditch which is now all filled in and leveled. It will be replace with a pipeline. Dan removed the fence and old posts and other debris from this corner.

To be continued.