Water! Water! Irrigation 101 for a Small Farm…

How do we irrigate on our farm?

This is a common question from our CSA farm members. And every viable farm must have a water plan, because Mother Nature is fickle.

Our plants need water about every 7 days. The ideal situation is an inch of rain per week. If it doesn’t come in the form of rain, we need to step in and intervene to keep them alive. When our plants need water, everything else gets put on the back burner. That means harvest, weeding, planning, seeding, eating, and yes… even sleep.

We’re lucky. We actually have a water source on the farm. Some farms don’t.

A few years ago, we invested some capital in digging an underground water line and creating two new water outlets near the high tunnel. That prevented us from having to drag long hoses out when we need to water transplants. And in 2019, we spent big bucks to replace the entire deep water well pipe that ran 300 feet into the ground. That was a once-in-a-lifetime event I’ll never forget!

Jed knows how to operate the engine that powers the well. This is often one of his chores.

So what tools does a farmer have up his sleeve when it comes to irrigating the fields? 

House Well Hook-Up

Sometimes we use the hookup to our house — attach a hose and sprinkle the beds in our back garden from the well in our backyard. These hoses are attached to upright sprinklers standing on the top of rebar, which waters about 4 beds at a time. This method is limited to vegetables in close proximity to our house. And it really affects the water pressure in my home.

We also use this house well to water all the transplants in the greenhouse, wash the crops in the washer/conveyer. and water the high tunnel crops using a sprinkler system mounted above.

The beds out in the field though are another story. Here we have four options:

Sprinklers hang from the tops of the high tunnel. You can also see the drip tape strips running down the center of the tomato bed on the soil bed.

Sprinklers

We’ve invested in a large number of sprinklers. These can either hang from the tops of the high tunnels and be turned on at whim or put on a timer.

We also have sprinklers that sit on posts. We can move these wherever we want and stick them in the ground.

Water Wheel Irrigation

This method is pretty labor intensive in comparison. It involves manually hauling large 30 ft sections of aluminum pipe into the field along the row we want to irrigate, then fitting them together like a puzzle, then connecting them to our parent’s well on the far end of the field.

This is what the water wheel reel looks like.

This pipe then fits onto a water wheel reel. Picture a giant wheel winded up with black hose. This hose pulls out to the end of a bed row. On the end of this hose we mount a sprinkler unit that shoots out high pressure water and waters the field. The reel slowly pulls the head back into itself, so that the entire length of the field can be watered.

The problem with this system is that a lot of the water evaporates before it gets to the plant root zone. More importantly, it requires a lot of oversight. Kurt has to keep an eye on the sprinkler head to make sure it’s operating properly. And when it’s time to water the next block of crops, you have to take the whole pipe apart, move it over, and screw it back together again, and repeat.

Watch a video of the water wheel in action here.

This method is used primarily for sweet corn. And for the last 2 weeks, Kurt has been sleeping every few nights in the truck “keeping his eye on” the irrigation pivot.  This explains why he’s been so tired (and a little big edgy if you’re been working here).

Although this irrigation system allows us a lot of flexibility (because you can move it anywhere) it does sometimes create some tension between farms. I’m not gonna lie… it’s hard having to “wait in line” and not be able to water your veggies exactly when you want. 

This irrigation head is slowly pulled in by the water wheel.

We are very fortunate to have a deep water well nearby, It sits on our parent’s land next door about 1/4 mile. This well is 300 feet deep, and can push out water at a rate of 300 gallons a minute. It was drilled by Kurt’s grandfather, and it’s a good thing he did, because without it, our  farms would be toast!

We think about water access a lot for estate planning purposes… maintaining access to that well next door is a high priority to us, and it will likely be the #1 reason we decide to purchase that land when our parents stop farming some day.

Drip Irrigation

When we first lay down the plastic-mulch covering the beds in the spring, we simultaneously lay plastic hose down the middle of the bed. This hose lies about 2 inches under the soil and is perforated, so that the water “drips” out in a controlled fashion over a 30-60 minute time frame.

You can see the drip line hose rising out of the ground and connecting to the blue “fireman hose” here.

The tip of the hose has a valve to open or close the line and sticks out at the end of the bed row. Each of these hose tips connects to a larger, reusable blue “fireman hose” that runs perpendicular to the beds. Water is then fed into this larger hose from either a giant tank sitting on the back of a wagon (powered by a pump), or the high pressure well located next door on our parents’ property.

Drip irrigation is the preferred way to water many plants because the plant receives water slowly over a longer period of time, and can use it better. Plus it’s easy to do. You just turn on a switch and the water flows. When you’re done, you turn it off. The work comes on the front end, setting up the irrigation system around the fields, and perhaps moving the giant aluminum pipes to be able to connect them to the blue fireman hose.

The pipes run all the way to our well on our parent’s property next door.

Water Tank

Sometimes when we’re waiting for access to the main well, we use the next best thing… we fill up a giant water tank with water and then plug it in to the drip irrigation line somewhere in the field. We turn on a mobile engine that pumps this water at a prescribed rate into the lines.

A Network of Pipes

And don’t forget the large network of pipes and tubing required to move all this water around! It’s a big investment every year. Over the last 15 years, we’ve slowly collected a large number of aluminum pipes that we can easily lift by hand. These lock together like a puzzle. The problem is that we don’t have enough of them yet to be able to leave them in position. When we need water to go to another locaiton of the property, we have to disassemble them, move them, and then reassemble the train of pipes. This takes precious time, and it’s hard work. One day, our goal is to have enough pipe inventory so that we can assemble all the different pathways, leave them there, and then just flip a switch near the main well.

Jed helps Kurt lay irrigation pipe. These pipes are moved by hand and locked together.

Water Security is a Future Problem

Water security is a liability for us and will surely become an issue for every farmer in the future. As fresh water becomes more and more scarce for our communities and the world, questions will likely come up as to who “should” get water privileges first, how much, who really needs it, what should be watered first and how much, etc.

Kurt and I have started talking about what we can do to insure a water source for our farm 20 years into the future, and developing a water plan. This will include things like using water more efficiently, and implementing cutting edge water capturing/storage technologies.

>> READ MORE: Why We Decided to Spend $30,000 on a New Deep Water Well for the Farm