Big move

Today I finished the first round of irrigating the hayfield.  The grass looks good and the alfalfa is growing good.  I plan to take a few days off before going over the hayfield once more.   In the meantime I will irrigate some of the pastures.

When I finished the hayfield I ended up on the east side of it so I had to move all the pipes across the hayfield to the pastures.   It was some work.  Donna helped.  It took the both of us over three hours to move all the pipes and replace a gasket.

The last riser on the mainline in the hayfield leaked when I disconnected the valve to move the pipes.  So I replaced the old/bad gasket on the riser.

All the pipe moves and gasket replacement were done while the pump still pumped water.  Replacing the gasket was a wet affair and I got soaked below my knees.  The temperatures was in the 80s so I dried out quickly.  Donna enjoyed getting wet several times in order to cool down.  The water is from the river so it is not cold, but kind of warm.

When taking Donna back to get her fixed car we noticed a sprinkler head wasn't turning.  By the time I went out to fix it I found a second sprinkler head wasn't turning.  Usually they don't turn or spray well because of a clog in the nozzle.  This time the failure was because a piece of tall pasture grass got caught in the striker that turns the sprinkler head.  Once I removed the piece of grass from each sprinkler they started working again.

Later in the evening when checking on the pump I noticed a small stick in the grill of the intake pipe.  I had to skinny-dip in the river to remove the stick.  I also found the grill was covered with weeds which I also removed.  Earlier I had thought the sprinklers weren't tossing water quite as far as they usually do.

A short time later I noticed another sprinkler head not turning.  Instead of pasture grass a small piece of weed somehow came out of the nozzle and got caught on the striker. 


I'm still working on the south fence.  Progress is slower than I'd like.   I got 13 fence posts in and seven strands of barb wire stretched on them.  104 feet.   After taking a shower this afternoon, eating a later lunch and then falling asleep for a few hours (a recent occurrence this week since the afternoons are warm), I worked more on the fence.  I got 15 more posts in the ground.  Tomorrow I will stretch wires on them.

The newer metal t-posts are six feet.  I did have a half dozen six and a half to seven foot t-posts which I used today.  Using a sledge hammer I usually pound the six foot posts while standing on the ground, but I needed a chair to be able to pound the taller t-posts into the ground.