We took a day off on this holiday weekend and did no work on Sunday. Monday we were back at it and now the irrigation is finally fully installed in all 3 fields.

This photo shows the onion, leek, beet and turnip bed (and a few radish stragglers which will be harvested any moment now). The 2nd planting of beets went in Monday (Memorial) and the turnips got their initial sowing. The drip tape is watering it all in.

I'm standing in Field #2 (which is in garlic) and looking past the grasswater way can see Field #3 which is in food crop production this year. I've had to buy many seedlings, the most of which I got from my pal Penny at Wishful Acres Farm (http://www.wishfulacresfarm.com/. I trust her growing methods and she is a like-minded farmer and friend.

I have an additional day off from my off-farm job so today we are pickling scapes.

Doing some weeding in a garlic bed, I pulled this strand of quack grass. As much as I despise it, I also am impressed by it's tenacity. Look at the length of that root!

Irrigation

The 3 Flat Acres irrigation system is up and running.

We are pumping water up a significant hill to the growing fields. Our flattest land is up on our ridgetop - far, far away from our well.

The white PVC runs up the side of the barn and OVER the barn drive access and then hits the fence line continuing up

We need to replace the barn roof first - until then, we'll be filling from the well.

We are collecting the water in the water retention tanks (~1500 gallons each - only one shown in the photo above), pumping it via PVC up the side of the hill to a PVC distribution array along our mid farm fence line with take-off valves along the PVC. The take-offs are large, flexible irrigation lines (similar to fire hoses) which are then linked to the drip tape in the fields. We anticipate that we can irrigate 3 fields from the barn set up.

This pump is fed from the tanks and sends the water up the irrigation lines

(yes, the stand is black locust)

Blue flexible lines feed the drip lines in the beds

We plan to repeat the entire process on the shop roof to irrigate our summer growing fields. These fields aren't in production yet.

This was a major undertaking. The current (almost) drought that we are experiencing demanded that we fast-track this project. Our garlic was thirsty.