Today was the day that we first pumped water from the dam into the header tank on the hill. I can hardly believe it!
We've probably walked the 250m distance between the dam and the tank about a hundred times by now, and we're not quite finished walking yet. I tried to capture some of the essence of the project in photos to share with you.
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| Marty, the International A414 and the big white tank on the hill. |
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| We used the single tyne ripper quite a few times along the run. |
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| We've had fun and learned a lot! |
In the photo above, it turns out Marty was taking this little video:
We're super grateful for the advice we've received from our local farmer friend, he saved us oh so much money! The irrigation and farm stores would have had us installing either 2.5" high pressure poly pipe, costing a fortune and being much more difficult to work with.. another was asking if we were SURE we needed 2" and thought that was overkill. Still others would have us spending big bucks for a centrifugal pump that might block up due to the particulate matter in the water. So thank you Richard for giving us spot-on advice and answering even the most newbie questions we had, you likely saved us at least $6,000 on this project.
We put pencil to paper and drew a rough plan of the irrigation, a few times actually, refining it each time. It really helped us both visualise the layout, count the parts needed, and we actually ordered exactly what we needed! It was awesome to have everything on hand, without rushing off to the shops for forgotten fittings. Oh, except plumbers white-tape. We needed an awful lot of that!
I found a website that sold the parts we needed very cheaply, and almost finalised the order when Marty thought perhaps we should give the list of what we need and the online prices to our local "Ag n Vet" rural supplies store, just to give them a chance to match it. Not only did they match it, they beat it! They also had the cheapest price on rural green-line poly pipe in the whole area, so we ended up getting just about everything very locally.
They were able to let us know about a local man who had a pipe laying attachment for the tractor as well, which was great as we already knew Pat! We are happily returning it to him tomorrow after finishing using it yesterday.
So, after lots of walking, assembling the compression fittings, using about 5 roles of white-tape (and we had avoided as many screw-on connections as we could in the planning stages), re-applying yet more white-tape as we found some of the connections leaking due to too little used, and re-tightening the compression fittings, we were happy to see the water slowly flowing into the tank. I guess I didn't mention the pump float we made with stormwater pipe, but I'll have to show that off in another post.
The water finally flowed into the tank for a few hours before the sun headed off to the West and a gum tree shaded the panel. We'll need at least a couple of good days to fill the tank completely, so we're thinking of purchasing a matching second solar panel to give the pump a little more juice.
Speaking of juice, Marty and I have been feeling much better now after falling into the sugar trap over winter. We started eating some, and we just couldn't stop! Sure, we gained a little weight, but that was nothing in comparison to the health effects. Our energy levels started to fall down again, Marty's asthma and eczema became worse than ever, and we weren't sleeping well either. After only a few days of being perfect carnivores, we started enjoying the benefits of good health once again. Sleeping soundly, needing less sleep, waking feeling good, (no back pain for me in the morning! hooray!) having enough energy to do this crazy irrigation stuff, and Marty's asthma and incessant itchiness finally settling down.
Yeah, it can be a little boring at times, but it's worth it. Just one hour of eating sugar equals many more hours of feeling less than optimal. That certainly isn't worth it.
Dr Ken Berry on YouTube is a great source of information and encouragement for us, I thought I'd share him explaining just some of the bigger issues with eating the addictive stuff:
So, we're off the sugar again, and feeling a million times better for it.
I wish everyone good health and success in your day. It certainly feels good to make progress!