Making progress on the irrigation

 The weather has been typical of spring, we had a cold snap and needed to start lighting the fire again..

Now that the weather is warm again, we even got a little sun burned today while ripping a trench with the tractor. No pictures of that, I'm afraid! We were both concentrating on the task and didn't spare a thought for picture taking. We made a single rip through the soil, ready to accept poly pipe, from the brand new big white tank on the top of the hill, all the way down to the back of the property.

The local wildlife enjoyed the exposed ground, Choughs filled their bellies with worms! We've been lucky enough to see a lizard sunning itself in a patch of capeweed.

We recently got the test results back from our a water sample we had taken from the dam. The results were overall pretty positive, only an alarmingly high aluminium (Al) number confused us (and everybody else we asked). Thankfully the pH value is neutral, and the most likely explanation that I can find is that the aluminium is natural gibbsite bound to organic matter in the water. Our soils are also naturally high in aluminium. We're both comforted by the fact that turtles, frogs, yabbies and other little critters live in the water and are seemingly healthy.

Marty and I donned our white lab coats to set up an experiment. 4 jars of dam water; one control, one with 2 tablespoons of fine agricultural lime, another with 2 tablespoons of hardware store gypsum and the last with 2 tablespoons of shell grit from our chook supplies. We wanted to see what effect any might have on the water. Nothing much happened over a few days, only a slight change in pH and hardness, most noticeable with the shell grit. The tiny black critters swimming around the jars didn't seem to mind either way. Adding a small dose of Charlie Carp (which is a fish-based fertiliser) to the shell grit test after the experiment was over made a sludge layer form at the bottom and seems to have killed the tiny critters! Something we certainly don't want to replicate on a larger scale!

Since pH is an important factor in making sure our water stays healthy, I decided to bust out the old soil test kits. I think they're both far too old to be of any help anymore though! One ancient test kit (yep, we got it in a "lot" at a clearing sale) was showing our soils to be 4.5, the slightly newer (but at least 6 year old) kit was showing a pH of 6 on the exact same soil. I think it's time to get a new kit, or perhaps upgrade to a digital pH meter.

So, we are moving forward with the dam water project. The next step is buying poly pipe and fittings, and setting up the solar water pump. As simple as that sounds, I know it's a bit more involved than that. We have been getting lots of practical advice from a very helpful and patient local farmer, and also watching lots of Greg Judy videos on YouTube about rotationally grazing sheep.

Stay tuned!