Irrigating!

My nephew wanted to play in the mud when he found out I got to play in the mud on Wednesday.  Easy for him to do given all the rain he is used to seeing, bu it was my turn.  Tom plowed the ditches on our property, and some of the ditch on the neighbor's property that leads to our property.  We walked the line a couple times before the water was cut into our ditch.  I know I still have much to learn about it, but no matter how much work is done ahead of time, the day the water comes is spent fussing - in a fun way.

found this when we walked the ditch on Saturday

Tom left for work after we had a chance to drive up together to the diversion where the water began flowing towards our little piece of land.  It had already been switched, so we drove on up towards the head gate to monitor the flow.  This has been a really bad year for us and the tumbleweeds.  We haven't been able to burn because of the drought, so they just blow from one property to the next, occasionally piling up in the fence.  The ditches were full of them, which doesn't always slow the water too much if the ditch is deep or steep enough.

Here comes the water!  

(If you imagined it as a tsunami of water, think again.  This trickle is pretty amazing when it runs all day.)

We managed to clear a few spots before Tom had to get going.  I walked on up the ditch from the house to see how far the water had come.  It hadn't made it that far, but far enough to collect a mess of the grass from Tom's plowing.  Once I reached the diversion, I turned around and started working my way back towards the house.  It felt like I pulled a bale or two of grass out, but the water mostly went where it was supposed to go.  And once it reached our place, I spent the day chasing it this way and that, hoping to let it soak in, damming it here and there, and enjoying the mud!

This rusty hunk of metal was lying in the grass along our southern line - looks like it came off of a wood stove.  It's actually beautifully ornate - I've got a couple ideas already where I might use it in the house.