Work on our new well here at our home site has officially begun. Last Friday the drilling company moved all of their equipment over in a caravan. It looked like the fun-zone of a small town carnival had come to set itself up on our farm. After a day of site prep and set up, they will begin to drill in earnest today. The first step is to drill a small diameter exploratory hole. Then they run an “E-log” which measures the resistance of the substrate material that the hole passes through and is able to determine where the water bearing formations are.
They are also able to measure water quality in terms of total dissolved solids (TDS) at various depths. In general, the water at the shallower aquifers has higher TDS and nitrate levels than those at greater depths. Wells in our area that are dedicated for drinking water can be from 500-1000 feet deep. In our case, the driller believes we should find good irrigation water at around the 240 foot level.
Once they find good water, they go back and effectively re-drill the original exploratory well with a special bit that greatly increases its diameter. They then install the well casing—8 inch for us—and backfill around the outside of it with sand below and concrete for the last 100 feet or so. How long it takes depends on what they have to drill through. Without a lot of rocks or sticky clay to slow things down, they can do up to 50 feet in a day. The good news is that it appears increasingly likely that we will have a good source of water to irrigate our new strawberry field with when we start planting in late November.
And speaking of next season’s strawberries, field prep has gone well and we are looking to list up new beds this Thursday or Friday. We are doing the Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation method on one acre this year and have a big pile of rice bran in front or our packing shed waiting to be spread. This is a technique that originated in Japan, on which our friend Joji Muramoto and his colleagues at UCSC have been doing research for the past several years. We’ll talk more about that in a future newsletter.
Meanwhile, this year’s berry patch has slowed way down but we’re still getting some fruit out of it, and another stretch of warm weather may extend the season for a couple more weeks. At this time of year, we’re shuffling fields around to plant the winter crops and next year’s berries. It’s a little more complicated now that we don’t have the Redman field to rotate crops into, but we’re assembling the puzzle pieces and figuring out where everything is going to be growing for the next season.
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