Irrigating screws up my life. I have to move around 30 pipes twice a day, every 12 hours. This messes with my sleep habits. I get around 4 and 1/2 hours of sleep. Move pipes at 7 am which takes an hour and a half to two hours. Do whatever else I can in the morning when it is cooler. Eat breakfast. Go to sleep and sleep 4 to 4 and 1/2 hours. Get up. Eat lunch. Maybe do some minor thing, then move pipes at 7 pm. Maybe get a minor thing done before dark. Eat supper.
Donna stopped by this afternoon before 7 pm. I didn't start moving pipes until 7:15 pm, which is fine. But not today. First off my backup line was all knocked over as the cattle pushed on the sprinklers and risers. I had to stand the risers upright one by one. A half dozen pipes from the end I saw the cattle had pushed and unconnected two pipes. I couldn't move all the six remaining pipes at once to reconnect them and had to take them apart and reconnect the six pipes one by one.
I usually carry a wire in my back pants pocket to clear the debris in the sprinkler head. Somehow I lost it from my pants pocket a few days ago. No problem as I only once this year had to use the wire to clear a sprinkler head. I hadn't replaced the wire so yesterday, of course, a sprinkler clogged. I used a strong stem of grass to clear the sprinkler head, and that worked. Today I didn't need that pipe and sprinkler. I also didn't find a new the wire for my pocket. Tonight another sprinkler clogged. Really? Two days in a row and two different sprinklers? This time the grass stem couldn't clear the sprinkler. I had to walk home and get a wire. That worked.
Then on to moving the second line. The last one in the hayfield. After I unconnected the first pipe I discovered one of my wrenches was missing from my back pants pocket. Earlier this week I had lost both wrenches from my pants pocket, the only time so far this year. The next two days I looked at areas I had been at for the wrenches. Couldn't find the wrenches. Got different wrenches that size. Then the third day I came across the wrenches in a different pasture. I didn't remember being in that pasture when I had the wrenches.
Now tonight one of the wrenches went missing. I was only in a small area in the hayfield and I looked and looked and could not find the wrench. I gave up and went on to move the pipes. This was more work as I had to carry the pipes to the fence and get them over it and on to the next location for the irrigation line. Because the moved line of pipes would use the same valve as the backup irrigation line, that meant I would place the moved pipes close to the valve. Once all pipes were laid I would open another valve to the open air and then quickly shut the backup valve and then turn that valve to the new line of pipes and hook them up. Open that valve and then close the "open air" valve.
It didn't work tonight. As I laid the line of pipes the calves came over to check what I was doing and they would push on the risers and knock the risers and the pipes over. I would chase the calves off and they would come back. They were obsessed. Eventually I got all 18 pipes moved and hooked. Then when I went to connect the first pipe to the riser I discovered the pipe was now several inches away. The calves had moved the pipes a bit. I had to unhook the first pipe to connect it to the valve opener. For some reason the pipe didn't want to go into the valve opener. For this line in the hayfield I had to go through the fence to reach the opener. So I had to go back and forth around the fence to work on getting the pipe into the opener. And then the opener wanted to come off the valve. What is going on?! It shouldn't be this hard to do!
Finally I got the pipe into the opener. Then I had to unhook the 17 pipes and then re-hook them one-by-one as I couldn't move 17 pipes at one time two inches to hook then to the first pipe.
Finally I got the pipes moved two inches and re-hooked and then opened the valve. The valve leaked where the pipe connected to it. Somehow, maybe, the trouble getting the pipe into the valve messed with the gasket. Oh well. Tomorrow when moving that line of pipes I can check the valve opener and gasket.
It took me 2 and 1/2 hours to move the pipes. It was a quarter to ten and was getting dark. Too dark to check the pocket gopher traps this evening.
Why, o' why?
You can see my grass and alfalfa grew. 24 days ago it was nothing. Nice to be out of the hayfield as the tall alfalfa/grass made it hard to walk and carry pipes.
Here you can see that with the alfalfa getting taller the water from the sprinkler can knock them down.
Moving pipes over the fence.
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