Another Columbia ground squirrel trapped

Back in June I had mentioned trapping Columbia ground squirrels in my hayfield.  They had returned after 15 years.  I trapped three of them.  Then nothing.  Once the irrigation lines reached that part of the hayfield I removed the traps and filled in the holes.  I think the gophers were gone.

Thursday I turned off the irrigation for the year.  Friday and Saturday, and the last thirteen pipes today, I removed the irrigation line pipes.  Friday evening when I started to remove the mainline pipes in the hayfield I noticed a Columbia ground squirrel hole was now open.  Saturday I set a trap.  Then saw another open hole.  I got another trap.  The hayfield alfalfa is tall and thick and it is hard to see the ground in the hayfield so I didn't look for more open holes.  This afternoon I found one trap had caught a Columbia ground squirrel.  Another one now gone.

For now I removed the traps.  Tonight I started cutting the hayfield.  Once the hayfield is done I will look for more open holes.

The pocket gophers and the Columbia ground squirrels seem to be acting differently this year.  In the past the Columbia ground squirrels disappeared for the year by the end of July.  It is now August 10 and they are still active and above ground.

A good sized Columbia ground squirrel in a trap.

Apricots. Irrigation. Buffaloberries.

This evening I finally moved the last of the irrigation pipes out of the hayfield and into the pastures.  The hay is ready to cut, and the alfalfa is blooming.   If I wasn't irrigating I would cut the hay right now.  To speed things up, the last so many days I moved the pipes to every other valve, not to all the valves.  This sped me up a couple of days. Now that the last of the pipes are out of the hayfield I need to wait a number of days for the hayfield to dry.  Otherwise it will be hard to cut.

Days ago when the irrigation pipes were in the fruit tree area I noticed the apricot tree had a number of apricots.  Getting apricots each year is hit or miss.   My apricot tree is the first tree to bloom in the Spring, before all the other fruit trees.   Blooming early can be a problem as the cold, or rain, or that the bees aren't as active yet, can lead to missed pollination.   This year is the most apricots I ever got, by far.  Which is good as I love apricots.

When picking the apricots I saw on the buffaloberry trees they had seeds.  Not enough to make jam.  Buffaloberries aren't that great to eat raw.

The buffaloberry trees had expanded with new trees this year.  I think by root.  They really expanded this year and were now growing all around my apricot tree.  I spent time cutting and removing a number of new buffaloberry trees away from the apricot tree.

Gophers, fox. dog. irrigation, lawn mower

Still trapping gophers.  I trapped three Columbia ground squirrels this year.  No more signs of any.  Since the irrigation is now in that area of the hayfield, and no signs, I removed the traps and filled dirt in the tunnel entrances to close them up.   I am still trapping pocket gophers.  Caught five today.  I am up to 48 for the year.  Some pocket gophers are very leery of the traps.   It can take a week to get them.  Often they just fill the traps with dirt.  And I have a few who then fill the tunnel with dirt.  I then have to dig again to find the tunnel that is open.  One spot I stopped for now as I could no longer find an open tunnel in the area. I'll try again in a week or two.  Every time I think I may be done in the hayfield I find another spot where a pocket gopher just started to make new tunnels and dirt mounds.

A few weeks ago, when walking out to check the pocket gopher traps in the hayfield I saw a fox in the hayfield.  It then took off to the south.  It was pretty.

Two days ago, in the afternoon when I was checking the traps in the south pasture two dogs came over towards me and started barking.  So that is why the cattle were bunched up the NE corner of the south pasture in the morning.  I then had let the cattle into the middle pasture.  It was time anyway to rotate.  I chased the dogs off.  Today I seen one of those dogs in my new neighbor's yard - Curtis's former place.  I had a talk with one of the new people this evening about the dogs.

We had rain the end of last week.  Enough rain so I took a two-day break from irrigating the hayfield.  I am back to moving irrigation pipes twice a day and irrigating again.

At the irrigation got to the yard I tried to get the lawn mowed before it was irrigated.  I first had to rake up the manure from the cattle who were there in the beginning of June.  Rake because the thick manure piles still could be moist underneath.  Some of the thin manure was raked to get it "up" so the lawn mower could then break it up.

I got a little over half the yard mowed before my lawn mower broke down.  The air cleaner is now getting oil in it.  I got this lawn mower back in 2008.   The lawn mower's time is done.  I'm not going to have it repaired.

The top part of my old lawn mower.

But to buy a new gas-powered push lawn mower.  Not as easy as it was back in 2008.   A number of them are now battery operated.  I don't what that.  More people want a self-propelled mower.  I don't.  Most people want a riding lawn mower.  I don't.

Yesterday morning after moving my irrigation pipes I went uptown to look for a new mower.  I went to: Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Cosco, Tractor Supply, Murdochs, both dependent Ace hardware stores, the Husqvarna store.  All the stores.  Not many gas-powered push lawn mowers.  Lots of empty shelves.  The few they had were the more expensive ones.  Husqvarna only had one.  It was a commercial model and cost $1500.  No thanks.  I guess I am going to have to find a lawn mower online and buy it there.

Therefore I didn't get the front half of the yard mowed.  The irrigation is watering it as I write this.

The south irrigation line today reached the east end of the hayfield.  Tomorrow the north line will reach the east end.  Then I start back.

Irrigation has started

Yesterday I finally started irrigating the hayfield this year.   I had cut my hayfield earlier, but we had an inch of rain one weekend so I could take my time laying out the irrigation pipes. It took me two days to lay out all the pipes.  I also had some work in the north and middle pastures and it would be easier to do if I could drive my pickup out there.  Laying the north irrigation line would prevent that.

I got my pasture work done for now yesterday afternoon, laid the last four pipes in the north pasture, then around 6 pm I got the irrigation pump started and going.  Before doing that I also spent time and effort to remove water weed in the river near the irrigation intake.  Better to do that now than in a few weeks as the water weed likes to grow and expand.

In the beginning I have the main line and sprinkler lines all uncapped.   For whatever reason stuff gets in the pipes as they are stacked and sitting there over the year.  The water washes the stuff out.  Better that way than have the stuff try to come put the sprinkler heads.  I laid out in the south pasture the extra pipes I had bought this Spring.   As this line sat there over a week, the cattle knocked the pipes over and the sprinkler heads lay on the ground.  It is a spare line so I will fix it / straighten it once the pipes are washed out.  I'll do it differently next time.  Have the sprinklers be standing from the beginning.  Yes, stuff was washed out the end of the line.  But once I stood the sprinklers up I discovered a third of more of them were clogged with debris.  Water and debris can go sideways.

I am now back to waking up early - for me - to move sprinkler lines twice a day.  7 am and 7 pm.   Since I fall asleep easily and need hours of sleep I then go back to sleep after moving the pipes at 7 am.

Irrigations Pipes. South pasture harrowed.

Myron brought over 15 irrigation pipes this morning.  These are the pipes I wanted so I can have a fourth line. I run two lines. A third line is so I don't have to turn off the irrigation pump when moving one line.   Once in a while a fourth line would be helpful when the third line can't be used, or it overused.

I placed the newer pipes on my stack of other pipes.

The rest of the afternoon I harrowed the south pasture and got it finished.  It took me yesterday and today to harrow this pasture.  Having trees to go around slows one down.  And there were some fallen tree branches from the snow last week to clean up.

A little Spring snow and down goes a large and long tree branch.  Here is an example of one.

The branch was one of three that came off the second tree from the right side.  One can see how this tree looks a little sparse in the mid-section.

Here is a nearby tree where the branches fell off a few years ago when we had a heavy wet snow in November.   No branches off this tree this year.

For whatever reason this tree is slowly dying from the top down.

Here are fallen branches from a tree in the middle pasture.  This tree had lost lots of branches a few years ago during that November snowfall.   I trimmed the side branches from the fallen branches.  Tomorrow I will clean up the remaining debris, then start harrowing this pasture.

These are not small branches that broke off from the snow.  It is surprising such large branches break off from a small amount of snow.

Big and long branches.

Here are all the branches from this tree I will keep for firewood next Winter.

Irrigation platform rebuilt

I got the irrigation platform rebuilt.  A good time to do it.  I'm not irrigating, the river level is low, and the weather is great.

As you can see the old platform was shot.

Before I rebuilt the platform I made steps in the side of the riverbank.  As you can see the bank is steep.  I was having trouble moving up and down on the bank and had to work hard to avoid slipping into the river.

The rebuilt platform.  It took a bit to do.  I had to come up with a new platform.  Fortunately I have a number of short boards.  And they were the right length and I didn't have to cut any.

My old platform had a few metal posts.  I moved two of them as the new platform is a little wider.   And I added two more posts in the riverbank to support this heavier platform.

The new platform is solid and wider and now it is easier to hook up the pipe that goes into the river especially as the filter on the end makes the pipe heavier and awkward to move.

How to support the platform?  Ah... the metal posts had a few holes in them.  And I had few scrap pieces of rebar that fit in the holes and was as wide as I needed.

After the platform was done I redid and moved a short simple fence from the irrigation shed to the river.  I had this fence to keep the cattle from accessing the riverbank here.  So the cattle wouldn't get to the pipe. And no need for them to be on such a steep riverbank.  And it worked over the years.  But this year a few calves got here.  Apparently they got over the log at the end of the fence.  So moved the end of the fence to where the log goes into the river.

And I spent some time removing more of the waterweed.  While irrigating I kept it away from the irrigation pipe.  But the waterweed doesn't stop growing.   It is easier now to remove more of it than in the Spring when it is colder and the water higher. 

Here is the waterweed before I started to remove some of it.

And there are some fish in the river.

Here are some smaller fish.  They are easier to see as they just below the surface of the water.

There were some water bugs walking on the river.  On occasion sometimes I heard a fish come out of the water.  Probably the fish came up to catch one of the water bugs.

And there was a dragonfly flitting about.

I'm glad I got this all done as the weather forecast is for rain over the next three days.

Irrigation pipes put away

Since we have had rain off-and-on the past week I decided to put away the irrigation pipes for the year.  The ground is wet enough.  I put the pipes away yesterday and finished today.

Yesterday I took a bag of apples out with me.  The cattle were resting elsewhere in the pasture.  As I was taking the first line of pipes away one cow came and checked things out.  She found the apples I had spread around the ground near this line of pipes. She ended up eating all of the apples before the rest of the cattle later came to this area.

When walking to move the second line of pipes I saw the remnants of the tree trunk was rolled away from the pile of branches where it had formerly laid.  More than likely Haynes pushed this tree trunk around. 

Irrigaton

Here is a photo of the broken sprinkler riser on my irrigation pipe that was broken yesterday.  I have it halfway fixed.

I may be done irrigating for the year.  We'll see.  It rained again this morning, almost a couple tenths of an inch.  I think this is the third rainfall in the past week.  I was sleeping really hard but the thunder during the rain shower woke me up.  We may have had enough rain the past week that I don't need to irrigate the last quarter of the pastures.   And I am tired from moving the pipes twice a day plus the other stuff I am trying to get done each day.  I usually get up to move pipes by 7 am but this morning I didn't get up until 8 am.  Then I went out and turned the irrigation pump off.  I also undid and laid down the sprinkler pipes in the middle and north pastures.  I don't want the calves rubbing on them and breaking another riser.   At 9 am I went back to bed and slept solid until 2 pm.  That makes 12 hours of sleep last night.  I needed it.

Mainline pipe removed from hayfield

This morning I removed the last of the mainline pipes from the hayfield.  Monday I had unhooked the pipes in the hayfield and removed three of the valves (6 pipes).  Today I removed the last 8 valves (16 pipes).  The pipes are stacked in the south pasture.  Now all I have to do is wait for the hayfield to dry.  That may take longer than expected.  Sunday was a rainy day.  This afternoon we had a rain shower.  The weather forecast is for cooler weather (70s) and a chance of rain a number of days.  Drying is going a lot slower now.

This evening when I moved the irrigation sprinkler lines in the pasture I ended up with a broken sprinkler riser.  When the sprinklers are not throwing water the calves like to rub on the sprinkler risers and sprinklers and scratch their face and neck on them.  For the first time ever they broke a riser.  I didn't notice it until I turned the sprinkler line back on.  I then saw I had a geyser.  Initially I thought the riser had unscrewed itself from the pipe as that has happened in the past.  Not this time.  I had to go and get another pipe.  I thought I would be able to slip this pipe in the line.  But it turns out this pipe is a foot longer than the broken pipe.  So I had to unhook three-fourths of the pipes and then add this pipe and then re-hook all the pipes again.  Now that the sprinkler lines are in the pastures it has been taking me almost 2 hours each time to move the sprinkler lines.  Tonight it took me 3 hours to get the lines moved.  It was dark by the time I turned the line back on.

Hayfield irrigation done. And Haynes.

This morning I finally got the last of the irrigation pipes out of the hayfield and into the pastures.  It took three days.  First day, the south line. The next day the north line.  This morning the extra line.  It is some work to do as I have to lift the pipes over the hayfield/pastures fence.   But I am happy to be done irrigating the hayfield.  Now all I have to do is to wait for the hayfield to dry so I can cut my hay.   The alfalfa is blooming to beat the band so it is ready to be cut.

I estimate I have 12 days left to irrigate the pastures before I am done irrigating this year.  I can't wait to be done.

This evening when I was moving the irrigation pipes in the middle and north pastures I heard a commotion.   It was Haynes.  He was pushing on the large metal feeder in the north pasture just outside the corral.  So, yes, it is Haynes that pushes the metal feeders around.  I never seen him do it before.   He puts a lot of effort into it.  And for a long while with break in between.  His tail was swishing wildly back and forth.  The dirt outside the corral slowed the feeder movement, but he still did move the feeder some distance.

When I was moving pipes in the north pasture he would stop and look at me.  His tail kept swishing and his head was held high.  I kept an eye on him as I moved pipes even though I was some distance away from him.  If he ever left the feeder to come my way I would be out of that pasture right away.  Haynes never left the feeder to come over to me and the cows and calves who were around me as I moved the pipes.  As I walked back across the middle pasture to open the valve and start irrigating the north line he watched me as I walked across the pasture.  He kept his eyes on me the whole time I walked.   When I was done I walked across the hayfield instead of the north pasture to return home.  I didn't want to be in the same pasture as Haynes as he seemed to have an attitude at that time.   He reminded me of the bulls in the bull riding events.  They have an attitude.  Donna loves watching bull riding.  I'm sure she would have liked to watch Haynes - from on the other side of the fence.

Started irrigating

As I mentioned in previous blog posts, I've been irrigating my hayfield and pastures for the last few weeks.  That is part of why I haven't been blogging much lately.  I'm tired.

Because of the rains we had the end of June and the beginning of July there was no rush to start irrigating.  And I had a few other things to get done first.  Then the temperatures warmed up a lot and that slowed things down.  

A few weeks ago I had some fillings in dental work.  And the initial Novocain I was given wore off right away.  The second shot of Novocain didn't work as when the dentist started work I could feel it.  A different dose of Novocain worked.  And afterwards when I rode my bicycle home the Novocain really worked as my face was really numb.  A short time later, and after sleeping, the Novocain finally started to wear off.   The next day my gum where the three needles went was still sore from the needle 'pokes'. Due to the heat I then got little done that day laying out pipes.

The newer aluminum mainline pipes that replaced the steel pipes should have made setting up the mainline pipes easier.  But slowing me down was the pipe's hooks and the latches where the hooks went.  There are two types of areas where hooks are latched to.  A "western style" which is flat and is a triangle shaped.  The second is - what I call - a "bump up" style.  The "bump up" style needs a longer hook because of the bump.

"Bump up" style with a long hook

Western style with a shorter hook

This photo shows the two hook lengths.

Almost all of the newer aluminum pipes had a "bump up" style of latch.  And a longer hook on the other end of that pipe.  My older aluminum pipes had a western style of latch and shorter hooks.  It was hard to hook the different pipe styles together as the shorter hooks had trouble fitting securely into the bump up latch.  So I had to replace / switch the hooks between pipes. The longer hooks were moved to the western style pipe ends so that pipe could hook to the bump up pipe.  And the shorter hooks went to the bump up pipe ends as the bump up pipe hooked to a western style of pipe.  *whew*  At least in the future hooking up the mainline pipes will be easier as the hooks are on the right pipes now.

Now that the "new" mainline pipes are all laid out, I am happy that everything (the valve locations) lines up the way it did before.  The mainline total length seems to be the same.  So all my calculations worked.

Also, when laying out the pipes I found this rock in the hayfield.   Rocks can pop out of the ground sometimes.

Friday evening July 12 I finally got all the pipes hooked up.  Time to work on the irrigation pump and the input pipe.  The input pipe is in two sections.  That is because I don't want the plastic pipe in the river in case the river freezes. 

The two pieces are connected by the white "ring" left of the white elbow.

It can be tricky aligning the two pieces together so I can then move the ring to screw the two pipes together.  Add in the fact that the wooden platform is deteriorating making it tricky to stand on safely.  On my to-do list later is to rebuild the wooden platform.  It took a lot of effort connecting the two pipe sections together.  Then later I had to re-do the connection as I hadn't greased or put thread-tape on the thread-ring that screws the two pipes together and apparently it was leaking air when I tried to initially start the pump.

Once the pipes were put together, time to prime the pump and start it up.  The pump wouldn't pressure up.  Over and over I tried.  I tightened the packing ring structure.  The pump still would not pressure up.  Eventually I took the packing ring structure off and found the packing was gone.  Used up, melted, mostly gone.   The packing hadn't lasted from the previous use.

Last year I had to replace the packing: https://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2023/08/irrigation-work.html

It was now after 6 pm on a Friday.  The shop where I had gotten the packing was closed. And being a repair shop, wouldn't reopen until Monday morning.  What bad luck.

I then thought of calling Myron, my irrigation guy.  I reached him.  He had some packing.  But he was in Great Falls, Montana for the weekend and wouldn't be back until Monday evening.  But Myron gave me directions on how I could get to some of the packing at his place, and I was able to.

Early Saturday morning I put the packing and packing ring structure onto the pump and was able to start the pump up and get the pressure going so that I could then irrigate.

I wasn't sure if I had used enough packing material as the pump's pressure was around 52-54 pounds.  Normally the pressure is in the low to mid 60s.  But I was happy to get the irrigating going.  I decided to wait until evening when I would move the sprinkler lines, then I would shut the pump off and try to add more packing.  But when evening came I looked and the pump's pressure was now 61-62 pounds.  So I left the pump running.

Now that the irrigation is going, my day is messed up.  I move the sprinkler lines twice a day.  Between 7 to 9 am and then 7 to 9 pm in the evening.  It usually takes me an hour and a half each time to move 28 to 30 pipes.  My sleep habits are different now.  I usually get only 5 hours of sleep at night before moving the pipes in the morning.  Then I sleep again.   Initially sleep was after moving the pipes in the morning.  But now that our temperatures are in the 90s during the afternoon I do work the rest of the morning, eat a full breakfast at noon, then sleep 4 hours in the afternoon from 1 pm to 5 pm.   My work schedule is a mess these days.

Things are finally settling down.  Initially every morning a sprinkler would go bad.  Sometimes it was because some debris or weeds was stopping the flow out of the sprinkler.  I do have one sprinkler that doesn't want to start turning when the water starts flowing, but I move the clapper a bit and then everything starts working.  Other times a sprinkler didn't want to turn around and I would replace the sprinkler head.

One time I replaced the sprinkler head with another one and that one wouldn't work.  It turned out the nozzle flow reducer wasn't in far enough.  It would prevent the clapper from reaching the water flow.  I tried to screw the reducer into the nozzle more.  It was hard to turn.  I couldn't quite get it in as far as needed.  So I took a file and wore down the end enough to let the clapper turn all the way it had to.

One afternoon the pump stopped.   The pump will stop when the temperature is mid-90s or greater.  That day it reached 97 as a high temperature.  The sprinklers were throwing water at 1 pm when I went to sleep.  At 4 pm when I woke up they were not working.  So I waited until 7 pm, when I usually move irrigation lines, to restart the pump.  No sense moving the irrigation lines without a full period of irrigating.

Restarting the pump wasn't smooth.   The pump had cooled down by then, but nothing when I hit the start button.  I tried this.  I tried that. Nothing.  I was ready to give up and tried one more time, and the pump started.  The only difference was that I had the control door open to the electrical panel.  That shouldn't make a difference, but apparently it did.   I left the control door open.

Due to our weather forecast for more hot temperatures I thought I would be in a routine of losing a half day of irrigation.   We had a number more days of upper 90 degrees - and one 100 degree day - of temperatures.   But the pump never stopped any other day.   Knock on wood.  Maybe leaving the control door open helped?

One time I checked and the water pressure was back down to the mid-50s.  I checked the input screen and found a lot of water weed covering it - even though I had cleared away lots of water weeds before starting the pump initially.  I removed the water weeds from the screen and the water pressure went up to 64-65 pounds.

I now have made it across the hayfield and almost back.  Ideally that is all I would like to do. The grass is growing nicely.  But due to our hot and dry weather the ground dries quickly.   I'm not keen on another out and back as that takes about 12 days.  And just going out means I have a long haul to get the pipes back so I can irrigate the pasture.  I made a compromise.  I will go out, but in doing so I will move to every other valve.  Then seeing how the ground conditions are, coming back I will either use the valves I didn't use going out, or all the valves.

Due to the wet grass when moving the pipes I wear my rubber muck boots.   However the boots always crack on the inside arch of my feet.  No matter if the boot is a cheap Walmart boot, or a $150 pair of boots.  The boots only last a year or two before getting a crack.  A crack means leakage of water.   So I wear old soaks and place my feet in plastic bread bags before putting them in the boots.  Still everything gets wet.  After moving the pipes I have to leave stuff out in the sun to dry.

And the fancy boots have a tendency twist the bottom of my pants legs around my ankles and want to pull my pants down.  Why?  I don't know.  I wish it would not do this.   I have to untwist the pants so I can get the pants off of me.  And wear a belt on the pants that I normally don't need to wear a belt on.

Irrigation is good as things are dry.  But moving irrigation pipes is a pain.  Due to the Bonneville power line towers in the hayfield and the trees in my pastures, I can't use a wheel line and must use handline pipes.  I don't think many people use handlines anymore.  I can't wait to be done with irrigating this year.