Irrigation Woes

Today I woke up, stretched and my upper back immediately went out of wack again. I popped a handful of OTC pain killers, got in my car and gritted my teeth through every corner, acceleration and deceleration all the way to the farm. It made for a long day but the worst of it worked its way out by mid-day and it ended up being the least of my problems.

First some background - I'm using some of my old cow watering pipeline for irrigation pipe to get water to my garden. Then the plan is to use soaker hoses or a garden hose as needed. The water is coming from a pond on the edge of the field (down a little hill). A generator will run a sump pump when it's needed. Not ideal but it should work for now. The pump sits in a 70ga water tank that keeps me from sucking up too much pond bottom gunk. A hose connects to the pump to go across a farm road to the pipeline. The hose is just for portability so I can move it off the road at the end of the day. The pipeline goes up the hill to the garden.

I grabbed one length of pipeline today, dragged it all the way back to where my garden is (which was not fun with a sore back), and realized it was about 50 feet too short. It also had a hole in it. Not a huge problem - there is plenty.

I went and got another (a full 400 footer), got it laid where it needed to go, went to hitch it to hoses at either end and realized I didn't know where any of my connectors were. Not a big deal - I wanted a new hose from Willey's anyway so I got the connectors while I was there.

When I got back, I hitched everything up, Bruce and I went to get a generator to power a sump pump, and it wouldn't start.

Plan B was an inverter that Bruce had in his van. I got all the way to the pond with it and found out that my lighter in my car doesn't work very well.

I went back to Willey's, got a bigger inverter (and one with battery clips), got back, hitched it all up and it came on! Unfortunately, the pump is under powered and water just kinda burps out of the end of the hose at a completely useless rate.

That was where I gave up for the day. Tomorrow I'm rerouting some water line back to the barn. Luckily a lot of the old pipeline already goes that way and just needs to be fixed so it shouldn't be too bad. It also means that if the generator fails again (once it's fixed), I'll have a backup!

Better now than in July I suppose.

There's nothing but sun and temps in the high 70s in the forecast. I'll be doing as much as I can to get rows ready and then if the forecast is still promising next week I'm going to start the main planting! I have all but Wednesday off next week so I should be able to get a lot done!