Earthquake and irrigation

Yes.  I felt the earthquake at 12:31 am this morning.  I was awake when the initial earthquake happened but went to sleep shortly thereafter and "missed" the aftershocks that happened the rest of the night.

At first I didn't know what was going on.  I was sitting along the south wall of the house and noticed sounds coming from the north wall.  (The earthquake's epicenter was well south of Kalispell in southern Montana.)  At first I thought a large truck was just outside my house causing sound and vibration on the north wall.  But I hadn't seen a truck drive down my driveway.

Then the sound vibration passed through the house from the north side to the south side.  Then the whole house began to feel like it was rolling on top of a wave, again passing from north to south.  That is when I realized it was an earthquake.  The rolling seemed to build and I wondered where this was going to lead and whether it would continue to increase, then it dissipated.

So I went to bed.


Irrigation....  more headaches and work.  The 4th of July night I saw Chris (who planted my field) while I was out riding my bicycle. I told him that over the past few days the barley had begun to head and now a majority of the barley had headed.  My question was 'how long until I cut my field?'   The answer was 'now'.   I had expected to wait a certain number of days after the barley headed out.  Nope.

So on Wednesday I removed the irrigation pipe from the hayfield.  The previous day I had finished irrigating the hayfield and now had the main sprinkler line pipes in the pastures.  But I had to remove the mainline pipe from the hayfield.  Yup.  The mixture of steel and aluminum pipes.  Not something I was looking forward to.  I must admit that removing the pipes seemed easier than putting the pipes in the field initially.  Maybe it was because I started at the far end, and after each pipe was removed, I had less of a distance to carry the next pipe. It still was a workout.

I also had a secondary sprinkler line in the hayfield, which I also removed.  I also had to do the daily move of the two sprinkler lines in the pasture.

A lot of pipe was moved on Wednesday.

Because I removed the mainline pipe from the hayfield I had to turn the irrigation pump off while I did so.  With the pump off I also fixed a leaky mainline pipe in the pasture and removed the grass stuck to the outside of the check valve in the river.   At the end of the day it came time to restart the pump.  I spent over an hour trying every which way to get the pump to start pumping water.  I then even had Donna come over and act as a 'good luck charm'.  All failed.

Wednesday was a tough day.  In addition I was able to ride only 17 miles on my bicycle.

This morning I started fresh.   After trying a few things and failing, Donna noticed the pump would leak occasionally.  It wasn't water from spillover when I primed the pump as by now I had taken the priming pump off and poured water directly into the pump.  Donna remembered as a child the family irrigation pump occasionally had to have its packing tightened.

The two bolts near the leak were loose.  I tightened the bolts a little bit - not too much as I didn't want to cause excessive wear.   The water leak stopped.  I started the pump and the pump began to pump water.

With the pipe removal, leak fixes and check valve clearing, the water pressure is now better than before.  The sprinklers are really throwing the water now.