Things got intense on the farm when our 8-foot deep well ran out of water. This well is spring-fed, and provides beautiful drinking water for us and several of our neighbours, in an area where most people have hard, mineral-rich water. This well supplies all the domestic needs for the 8 people who live on the farm, all the people who work here during the day, the seedling greenhouse, the laying hens in the pasture that belong to Fill Yer Boots Farm, and our vegetable washing/packing area. The questions came fast as panic set in: What are we going to drink, how do we wash our hands, and, how do we wash all the vegetables we’re going to harvest today? Sean White, who has developed a mythical ability to fix things on the farm, calmly started a process of elimination, as he looked for a leak. He put one end of a screwdriver to his ear, and the other end touching the pipe leading underground from all the frost-free hydrants on the farm (we have 6). He used the screwdriver like a stethoscope, to listen for the sound of a leak below ground. He found a leak at the hydrant in the seedling greenhouse and fixed it. Thank you Sean!
We have not had much rain lately so water is at the top of everyone’s mind. At the beginning of the spring we had too much rain, preventing us from getting on the heaviest-textured land to prepare it and plant crops. Now the land is bone dry and won’t produce anything unless we irrigate. Irrigation has come with irritation because our hoses and fittings keep coming apart or leaking. And we don’t have irrigation set up at the new, heavier land we are renting. We bought two used irrigation reels for the new land, and used items are always leaking and challenging. Hopefully we’ll have irrigation figured out soon. These kinds of headaches always happen when we’re trying something new. I have to say, though, the irrigation reels are part of our attempt to transition from a system of growing that relies heavily on plastic drip tape and plastic mulch, to a system that relies on irrigation reels, cultivation, and bio strips. At this point, we are experiencing some transition pains. But we have hope it will all work in time.
In other farm news, all the birds seem to be having babies. The swallows have set up nests. The little baby kildeer are running around the fields while their parents try to distract us from them with loud cries. The red winged blackbirds are feeding their young, who seem to be bigger than their parents. The waxwings seem to be increasing in number, which is good, because they, along with the swallows, love to eat mosquitoes.
