Flood Irrigation

[Dave]

Got to love flood irrigation. No power bill to pump water. No pumps or sprinklers to purchase and maintain. No hours moving pipe. Gravity still works and water will run down hill if given a chance. Every morning I go out and move about three of the dams. That just takes a few minutes each. Every 4 or 5 days I shut off the tap into a ditch and open a different one. That only takes a few seconds. I literally spend more time running the quad from one point to another than I do actually doing something at that site. The only down side is green grass with surface water under might be home for a mosquito or two or three million....

 

[Dave]

I have to go out and change the irrigation. It is time. It is raining out. What is wrong with that picture. Wearing a rain coat to change flood irrigation where the water in ankle deep on the ground.
Some of the guys down at the lower end of the ditch were complaining they weren't getting enough water. So yesterday we opened the head gate some more. They have plenty of water today.

 

[greybeard]

Got to love flood irrigation. No power bill to pump water. No pumps or sprinklers to purchase and maintain. No hours moving pipe. Gravity still works and water will run down hill if given a chance. Every morning I go out and move about three of the dams. That just takes a few minutes each. Every 4 or 5 days I shut off the tap into a ditch and open a different one. That only takes a few seconds. I literally spend more time running the quad from one point to another than I do actually doing something at that site. The only down side is green grass with surface water under might be home for a mosquito or two or three million....

Flood irrigation...... We don't use the F word round here....

 

[gcreekrch]

Pretty cheap way of growing hay all right. Our dams go in as soon as the ice leaves and come out in late June. A month later we can cut hay.

 

[Nesikep]

your land has to be flat enough.. ours was ditch irrigated for years... from the 30's up until the late 70's... it washed a LOT of dirt downhill
I wouldn't mind not having to move pipe though.

 

[Dave]

Got to love flood irrigation. No power bill to pump water. No pumps or sprinklers to purchase and maintain. No hours moving pipe. Gravity still works and water will run down hill if given a chance. Every morning I go out and move about three of the dams. That just takes a few minutes each. Every 4 or 5 days I shut off the tap into a ditch and open a different one. That only takes a few seconds. I literally spend more time running the quad from one point to another than I do actually doing something at that site. The only down side is green grass with surface water under might be home for a mosquito or two or three million....

Flood irrigation...... We don't use the F word round here....

My place on the Washington coast had a river in the back end that normally runs about 3-5,000 cubic feet a second. There were a couple of times it got up to 75,000 cubic feet per second. That is a lot of water going by and I was on an island.
Flood irrigation is a whole different thing. Think a couple inches of water flowing under you grass when and where you need it. Outside the irrigated meadows in the valley floor we get an average of 10 inches of rain annually.

 

[greybeard]

Think a couple inches of water flowing under you grass

That's all the time except hard drought years...but it usually isn't just a couple inches. :)
My top water table is pretty high.. and deep.

 

[Dave]

Think a couple inches of water flowing under you grass

That's all the time except hard drought years...but it usually isn't just a couple inches. :)
My top water table is pretty high.. and deep.

I had a pasture like that on the coast. I often though I should be raising water buffalo instead of cattle.

Here I get to control how much water, when, and to a certain degree where it goes. The ditch on the south side of the valley irrigates about 900 acres. The one on the north side services about 500 acres. Both withdrawal head gates are on my property. That makes me the first one on both ditches. I get all the water I want.

 

[Named'em Tamed'em]

Will you cut it or put cows in?

 

[Dave]

Will you cut it or put cows in?

The irrigated ground gets cut for hay. Cows have miles and miles of range in the summer. They do get to eat off the regrowth in the fall. Over in the Baker Valley they graze irrigated pastures but they have a lot more acres of irrigated fields over there.