Irrigation progress

Zeke lording over his subjects on top of the hay pile in the barn

sprinkler pipe headed to house

Yesterday we attempted to sort cows.  This is turning out to be more of a chore than anticipated.  Annmarie and I spent over two hours traipsing around the property.  The dogs did very well but it took a while to get the cows where we needed them. We managed to finally get them pushed into the barn lot and then could not get them to push back into the corral area.  The crazy green tag cow rushed Annmarie again.  She is not safe to be around when she has a calf.  She just gets more and more aggressive every year.  So, after a fairly brief parley it was decided we will have another 300# of hamburger this fall.  We cannot risk her hurting one of us.  We decided to leave the cows on their own, placed feed and water in the corral and attempted to watch them from the house so someone could run out and lock up the corral.  No luck, the cows refused to comply.  They laid down and never came into the corral in the daylight. 

We were going to setup irrigation pipe but I needed the tractor to pull the pipe trailer.  I had no fuel in the tractor so after a brief interlude for fuel we were back in business.  I pulled the trailer down and had to juggle it back and forth to get it though the field gate.  We started offloading the pipe and discovered two different kinds of connectors for the 3 inch pipe and various lengths of sprinkler risers.  Annmarie and I laid it all out and then I finally managed to get the pump running.  I primed it twice before I remembered I needed to open the stop cock on top of the pump to get the pump housing full of water.  Once the pump was primed it fired right up.  The water didn't get all the way to the end of the pipe run. I had not blocked off one end in the orchard and it was closer than the far end of the pipe.  We had several leaking joints and an abundance of clogged sprinklers.  We had one 3 way splitter and this will allow us to run pipe into the orchard and down toward the schoolhouse.  I really need to get all the sprinkler heads replaced with new ones.  The system will use less water with new heads.

One of the bigger problems is the pond is leaking through the embankment.  There is a 2 inch gap between the concrete weir and a large metal panel.  It is letting water run out.  Annmarie has told me that I need to make a concrete slurry and pour it in the gap and it will fix itself.  I am running with this plan.  I hope it works.  We ended up with a lot of sun exposure for the day. 

cat lounging taken to a new level