Hayfield irrigation done

Today I moved the third irrigation sprinkler line from the hayfield to the south pasture now that the two sprinkler lines have moved far enough down the pastures.  So I am done irrigating the hayfield.  I did two out and back passes even though Donna thought I could get by with one out and back pass.  Extra water doesn't hurt, and I also do not want to place the mainline in the hayfield again after I cut the hay as moving the mainline is lots of hard work.

After moving the two sprinkler lines in the morning I waited until the grass would be drier before moving the third line.  The hayfield grass is tall and thick and walking in it when wet soaks my pants several inches above my knees.  I used the time to finish the fence repair along the south/middle pasture line.  Once I was done I moved the tools over to another section in the middle pasture along the river where I want to fix a few fence posts along the river that may act to discourage Toby and Maria from walking upriver.   And wouldn't you know.  Toby and Maria had just decided to walk upriver.  I was minutes late.  I thought maybe I could convince Maria to turn around.  The river is a little over knee deep, I was a touch ahead of Maria, so I jumped in.  But cattle can move faster than a person in water and Maria veered out and ran upstream before I could get her to turn around.  So I had to let them do a little exploring.

I moved the third sprinkler line, and after a late breakfast at 1 pm, I started to move the mainline from the hayfield.  At this time Maria and Toby came back to rejoin the herd who now were in the south pasture.

I had to turn off the irrigation pump while I disconnected all the mainline pipes in the hayfield and moved the end cap to the last pipe in the pastures.  Before starting up the irrigation pump I had to get in the river and clear the screened pipe intake and the area around the intake.  In certain parts of the river weeds grow up from the river bottom.  The screen had lots of weeds on the outside and the river bottom weeds were almost reaching the intake.  Once a year I have to remove the weeds.  Usually the water pressure is 50 to 60 pounds.  Before I turned off the pump the pressure was 30 pounds.  That would explain why the past number of days the distance the water was being thrown was less.  It wasn't because I added pipes after getting past the corral area.  I now have the good water pressure again and the distance the water is thrown is quite far.

I then had to gather the pipes from the hayfield and stack them.  So I am tired now.  Once it warms back up - I wore a flannel shirt over my shirt all day - as today's temperature barely reached 70 degrees when our normal high temperature should be in the low 80s, I will cut my hay.