It’s been a hectic week here on the farm. The well drilling went along super smoothly—Jim and Jose from Chappell pump said it was one of the easiest wells they have ever installed. After the test well was finished they brought in an outside contractor who did an “e-log” which measures the resistance of the substrate the well passes through. From that they determine at what depth the water-bearing formations are at. In our case they found water-bearing sand almost the whole way down. The only drawback is that water moves much more slowly through sand that is does through gravel, so they ended up having to go 100 feet deeper than we initially expected and putting perforations on a much larger area of the casing. Once the test well was complete and they knew how deep to go, they effectively re-drilled the hole with a special bit that widened it to a much larger diameter. The casing was installed next—in our case it is 8-inch PVC. They then used a course sand to fill the space around the casing below and then installed a sanitary seal and filled the last 120 feet with concrete. The last step was to “develop” the well which involved cleaning the screens by pumping large quantities of water out.
That water needed a place to go. They had initially dug a settlement basin for the water and mud so it wouldn’t run down the hill to the slough. That basin filled up during the drilling and has a couple feet of clay and mud in it. For this stage, they needed a larger area to run the water into. We’ve begun taking out the smaller block of strawberries, so they started pumping the water into the long furrows between the rows. It looked like we were furrow-irrigating the strawberries! Furrow irrigating used to be widely used. In fact, when we bought the Lewis Road ranch, the previous owner explained how he had helped with furrow irrigating strawberries they were growing on that property when he was a kid. It’s hard to imagine anyone using furrow irrigation in the current drought. The drip irrigation we use now is much more water-efficient!
We’ve also been busy preparing the ground for next year’s strawberry patch. With some uncertainty about what kind of El Nino year this will turn out to be, it’s good to have the ground worked into beds early in the fall. It is possible to miss the window for this task if the rains come early and hard. For the past couple years, we’ve been hiring a local company to “list” up the beds. They have much larger tractors that are equipped with GPS so they can make much taller, straighter beds than we used to make ourselves. The tall beds make it easier to pick the berries because you don’t have to bend down as far.
The pumpkin patch was fun! We hope to see more of you next Saturday, which will be the last day we do it. The kids (and adults) especially seemed to enjoy lobbing pumpkins over the fence to the goats with the trebuchet, and the goats wisely learned to hide in the trees when the pumpkins were coming. They should be ready for more pumpkins by Saturday.
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