Sunday, April 19, 2009

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

What do farmers do when they're not in the field? Well...they work. Quite often, in the field.
This has been a very wet spring! Fields need sprayed for the weeds that are coming up, and crops need to be planted. But it's been too wet. It stands to reason that we have some drainage problems. The guys thought it would be a good idea to add some drainage tubes to this field.

It starts by digging a big hole in the place that doesn't drain well. They will put in a vertical drain here so that the water will flow underground to a tube that will carry it elsewhere.
This is some of the drain tubing that will be laid under the ground and taken to a low spot where the water can get away without eroding the soil.


This is Ted on the "trencher." This machine moves a whopping .2 miles per hour (or something like that). It was actually running when I took this picture. It has a big contraption (I don't know what it's called) on the back that...well...digs a trench.



This is how far Ted had gotten when I was there. (This probably took him the better part of a morning.) I'm not kidding! This thing crawls. I actually saw a snail that was out-running him.



Unfortunately for Ted, he has to get all the way over to where that little bitty orange speck is, just to the right side of that purple strip. (That orange speck is the back hoe you saw in the first picture. Click on the picture and it will make it larger for you.)




Speaking of that purple strip...that is hen bit. It is (by all farmer definitions) a weed. This time of the year, it pretty much takes over every field it can. Ted is always in a race to kill it. In the race, I never know whether to cheer for Ted, who is our provider and simply has to kill this weed so that we can all eat this year...or for the hen bit in all of its purple glory. Hmmm...tough decisions!
Post script:
Since taking these pictures, we acquired at least another couple inches of rain. The trench filled in with about a foot of soil. This is getting ridiculous!





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