Around the Farm

Been a busy couple of weeks on the farm and somehow I don't feel like I've gotten anything done. 

The main project that I've been working on has been our irrigation ditches. They were neglected, though not terribly, but were in an unwieldy position for efficient crop watering as we plan to do. The only thing they were ever put to use for was to flood the pasture and let grass grow. With our significant modifications I hope to have a great deal more control of the water and can use it to it's most efficient end.

I often liken our property to a landing strip. It's nearly 1300 ft long and just shy of 90 feet wide. This photo is of the mass of the property, the home is off the page but you can see on the far left side of the property our triangular marshland area which is at the lowest part of the property and on the right side, the sweeping path of our main irrigation ditch as it was when we moved in. 

Here's a little closer image of the right side of the property so you can clearly see the irrigation ditch as it is... or WAS I should say. The old method of irrigation was to basically open gaps in the ditch bank and let water run to the left across the open field as you can see leaving quite a few un-watered areas.

Our primary modification to the irrigation plan has been to dig a new main ditch out into the property and then to add a three way split to send one line up to our neighbors property and the further down the irrigation line, and the the other line further into our own property to another 3-way split. This one will head down to our other new neighbors house for their fields to be irrigated... a thing that has not been done in years apparently. The existing ditch will be filled and our previously bifurcated "front garden" will be joined and of much greater use we hope. 

When we brought the new ditch across the property we needed to replace the galvanized pipe that was there as a pass through allowing us to drive over. I had a great idea to try to manufacture one on my own from some steel 55 gallon drums that I have. I cut the bottoms out of a couple and banded them together. Upon bringing them over to the trench which had been dug for them and rolling them in... they abruptly fell apart. This DID NOT work.. Ha.. well dangit, it was worth a try I guess.

So a couple of days later I bit the bullet and went ahead and paid $152.00 for a 12 foot section of shiny new  corrugated galvanized pipe which I promptly buried beneath a pile of clay soil!

The next couple of day saw my back getting made sore by digging out, cleaning and building up the head gates. The one below is the second split which will head off to our South neighbors. The right side head gate leads out into our back field.

And this is the main head gate coming in from the main ditch. The concrete pipe leads out into our property and just on the right you can see the new steel pipe going up to our North neighbor.

I was lucky to be able to get the last head gate built just in time for the water to be turned down the ditch.

So like I said, I feel like I don't see a lot coming along, but really there's been quite a lot. Water is here, spring is upon us, and although I STILL don's have anything but fruit trees in the ground, we will get there eventually.

More to come.
Best to you all.
P~

A Shameless Plug

I mentioned a little while back that I was fortunate enough to get to be teaching a class in Vegetable Gardening Basics coming up just next week with the University of Utah's Lifelong Learning program. Just one more week.. can you believe it. I hardly can... seems it crept up on me!

If you've heard of the class and are sitting on the fence as to whether you'd like to attend, I thought a nice little teaser of some of the things I'll be covering would be a good idea. And a few bits of garden eye candy to go along with it couldn't hurt either. If you're looking to get a great start on your garden this year, now is a great time to learn some of the basics and I'd love to be the one to do it. Hope to see you in a little over a week! You can go HERE to register for Vegetable Gardening Basics or check out all the Lifelong learning classes at:    http://continue.utah.edu/lifelong/classes

(Click image for better quality version.)



Lifelong Learning Vegetable Gardening Basics

You may remember me mentioning in my last post that I would have some great new news to share with you very soon. Well I do!

The University of Utah lifelong learning program has asked me to be one of their instructors during the Spring Session and I have agreed to whole-heartedly! I will be teaching a "Vegetable Gardening Basics" class for five weeks beginning on February 5th and running through March 5th. In addition, I will be teaching another class at the end of March on "Maximizing your Garden Production" focusing on space-saving techniques, trellising and other ways to maximize your garden in small spaces. That class will run from March 26th through April 2nd.

I was flattered greatly that they thought of me for these classes and, although a little nervous, I am super excited to get to do them. I've taught vegetable gardening basics a number of times with the Master Gardener extension service program, but they have always been in relatively short one session classes. They always seem to feel rushed and I always felt like it would be great to really get to "dig" into some of the topics more deeply. This will be my chance.

If you are reading this and are in the greater Salt Lake City area and are interested in the class. Please go to the Lifelong Learning website at the University of Utah website and register. For that matter, if your in the area at all, go to the site and check out all they have to offer. From gardening, to pasta making, to photography and Chinese for travelers they have to much to offer! It's a great program and I'm so proud to be a part of it.

For those interested, I will post more details of the topics to be covered in the days to come. I look forward to seeing you there!
P~

Permaculture Course - Video 6

Well the holidays were great for us and I did manage to watch a number of the videos from this series although I haven't yet documented them. I've not gotten a lot of feedback on these reviews so, although I will still be reviewing them because more than anything this blog is still for me..., I will not be doing any real in depth analysis of them other than to just kind of order some of my ideas here in a pseudo formal setting. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, regardless of if or how you celebrated it.

This video was primarily focused on the design process... or at least that was the gist of it. I have enjoyed each of these videos quite a bit, but I do have the singular criticism that Dr Hooker is quite wordy and prone to tangents and I think some really valuable subject matters tend to sometimes get glossed over from time to time. This class was one of those to a certain degree but still had a bunch of great information.

To start things off, we went through he scientific process. In essence, and in case you are rusty in your Middle School science topics, the scientific process is basically - Observe, Hypothesize, Test, Analyze results and come to a Conclusion. There were also a number of other methods that he went over, such as the Koberg/Bagnall Process (From the Universal Traveler) and the "New Age Process". Over all they all come down to the root of pay attention and observe what is going on on the land already before beginning any design process, Come up with how you best think you should proceed based on those observations, put it in to action and analyze what happens. Afterword, conclude whether it is working and modify it accordingly. I agree with this process completely and have found it to be the correct way to go through much experience.

Observation
The first part of this process is to observe. Collect data regarding your property by observing it casually, as well as by using the physical tools available to us that have been proven throughout the years. (I will get more into some of these tools in a later dedicated post at some point.) Tools such as Topographic maps, pegging the slope, weather data and such.

One particular tool that he puts into use during his design process phase is called a Sector Analysis. The sector analysis is a way of documenting what Dr. Hooker calls the "wild energies" coming into a property from all sides. Those wild energies may be wind, sun, or people energies. Also documented in the Sector Analysis are views, access points and such, as well as the differing sun inputs based on the solar seasons. This will be one of the first things that I do when I begin designing in detail my garden here on my new land.

Another great tool that he goes into with some detail is a sort of North arrow compass rose that he integrates into all of his design projects. What it does is to document, in relation to the property and it's orientation, the path of the sun and the light coming into the landscape.

Probably the best thing I got from this, honestly, was a wonderfully simple explanation of how to determine and calculate the amount of sun coming in at a particular angle based on the season and the angle of the sun. I understood the concept as a basic part of passive solar heating and cooling, but didn't quite have my head wrapped around the math behind it. This math can be put into use when determining placement and design of any landscape features that may affect the plantings in the garden.

The final portion of this class was to show how a landscape analysis drawing gets put together and how it illustrates all these factors in one place. This will be an invaluable process in our design phase. I will definitely go into this with much greater detail in the future.



It really was a pretty darned informative class. I realized exactly how much so as I reviewed my notes and re-watched portions of it as I went through creating this post. It was well worth the watch.

Now that the holidays are over I will be trying to get these video reviews up a little more regularly. Although, I do have some really cool new news that I will be sharing with you here very shortly that will take a portion of my scarce free time. It will be well worth it though!

Talk again soon.
P~