Splash

I started the morning by delivering four split halves to customers up in Scotts Valley - east of Santa Cruz. From there, I headed over to Watsonville to meet Ev and try to fix our water problem.

When we starting digging, we only had a general idea of where the pipe was. We used shovels and a digging rod - a five foot, iron rod used to break up the hard dirt by continually beating the ground. It didn't take long to find the pipe...

Smash. Water squirt. "What?" Pull rod out. Splash.

I was soaked. When searching for the pipe, I inadvertently broke the PVC with the digging rod causing an explosion of water and mud, all over my face.

Anyways, we found the pipe, fixed the problems, and now the water works (hopefully). I finished the day by building some more fence and heading home.

Puzzles Under Ground

I may be starting to sound redundant, but seriously... water is an issue. Today, Ev and I got to the ranch early to check on the cows. We found that the siphon wasn't working again. We moved the cows off the trough and opened up a fence so they could water off Mill Creek. We spent about 4 hours trying to solve the siphon problem.

My motto for ranch work has become "Every journey begins with a single foot step."

As Ev and I ran back and forth between the trough, the pond, the tank, and any other possible point where air may be getting into the line, it became clear that a simple idea - our siphon - can be an incredibly confusing problem. But, we may have found the problem - air is being pulled into the pressurized line from further down the line. The solution: dig a hole where the water line "t's" to go into the pond, cut both ends of the PVC, install a valve on both sides, reconnect the PVC, and fill in the hole. This is what we have to look forward to for tomorrow.

In other news, Julie, Joe's wife, sent me pictures from this weekend. I joined Joe's family for a little sailing trip on Joe's dad's boat from Tinsley Island in Stockton down to Alameda (Oakland). It was a blast and a memorable sailing adventure.

Water Works

Today, Everett and I got to the Kelly Thompson Ranch around 7:30. We went up to Mill Ridge to check on the cattle, where we'd left them over the weekend. Ev had gone and checked the cows yesterday and knew to expect that some of the fence would be knocked down. Sure enough, a couple sections of poly-wire that bordered the creek were a mess. We took an hour to clean them up and build three more fences, creating three new paddocks for the cows. We then proceeded to gather up the cows and move them to one of the new paddocks in Arano Flat.

In the new paddock there is a trough. The trough, like the others in the Picnic Grounds, can be fed from a siphon that draws from a holding pond in the Little Field (East of Arano Flat). We'd planned on the having the cows water from the trough that was being fed from the pond, BUT, just like the troughs in the Picnic Grounds, we ran into some problems...

For some reason the siphon wasn't working. We spent about an hour and a half running back in forth between the tank that feds the pond, the pond, and the trough... and an air release. We were able to get it to hold but unable to have it pull the volume we were looking for. So, tomorrow, Ev and I will head over to the ranch around 6:30 to check on the cows, clean up some fence, and work on the siphon.

I'm optimistic but I hope it doesn't take a week to figure this out - by then, the cows will be gone...