PVC Princess

Sorry I’m so far behind in my updates, but my weekends have been a little busy and crazy lately.

            The weather has improved. The sun is out and warming the plants. The mountains are just speckled with snow and in the valley bottom we bask in the brilliant sunlight and warmth. The lambs and calves are growing. The pea tendrils are stretching out and climbing up the trellises. We continue to plant, sow, weed, hoe, and cultivate.

            We had our first CSA harvest. It was successful, though many of the plants were still small. Everyone was so excited and thankful for these wonderful vegetables. Each of us apprentices were assigned a plant or two to harvest, wash, and divide for Covelo CSA members, Willits, and Ukiah. There was a lot of counting. But I enjoyed learning how to harvest veggies I’ve never harvested before.

            So since we have all these new and growing plants in the field, they need lots of water, which means irrigation! Because of the field rotations the irrigation has to be very portable. So we had to bring out a lot of PVC piping connect it, flush water through it, and find all the breaks or cracks and fix them. These pipes are pretty old so there were quite a few repairs to do. I learned quickly: cut, sand, primer, pvc-cement, press, twist, hold for 30sec, then move on to the next repair. I am a PVC-pipe pro!

            Some new local farmers came to have an irrigation tour. I said, if you want to really learn how it works, you need to help fix it first. There isn’t a better way to get to know the quick and dirty of how portable irrigation works.

            After inspecting over 2,340 feet of pvc pipe we have the garden irrigated! But it’s not over yet; we only have half the field yet to garden!