"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours. . ."
William Wordsworth, 1802
There is too much to write about.
***The indictments and photo evidence.
***Trump's denials.
***The GOP response attacking the prosecution, but not saying they think Trump is innocent.
***Fox's change. Its legal analyst saying this is bad for Trump.
***Ukraine.
***The Supreme Court decision on Alabama gerrymandering.
***Canadian smoke.
***NBA finals.
I am going to step back and write about farming.
First off, let's recognize that farming isn't nature. Foraging is living in nature. Agriculture changes nature, and the effort to do that created created civilization. Like farmers along the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, and Yellow Rivers, I am dealing with irrigation problems. I am not seeing nature, and the world is too much with me.
This is a happy field. It is hard to see, but there are drips coming straight down every two feet, creating a round wet spot. The drips sparkle in the sun and show up on this photo as little white spots.
Every third wet spot will soon have a tiny grape start planted in it.
Theoretically, it is easy. Twist a dial at the control station for a block of grapes and that section of the vineyard starts dripping. There aren't grapes planted yet. This is dress rehearsal. I am trying to find out the points of failure. It also does a current purpose. The wet spots make it easier to prepare for planting by pre-digging the holes the plants will go in. The wet softens the soil.
This is a good hole, in preparation for planting next week:
This is a row of holes:
A rule of thumb of irrigation -- and probably generally about life in general -- is that you cannot just turn irrigation on and see it is running and then count on it working. You have to check it. You must walk around and see if there are any surprises. Leaks. Kinked lines. Failed parts. Plugged parts. Mis-aimed sprays. Stuff happens.
I got a blowout of one of the lines. Modern underground irrigation systems are made of plastic, not galvanized steel pipes. Many of the fittings are pressure fittings. You stick them together and they lock into place. I don't trust them but that is how things are designed. To paraphrase Rumsfeld, you fight irrigation problems with the equipment you have, not the equipment you might want to have.
This happened. A blowout of a pressure fitting. Water was spurting out of the ground.
In the soft loamy pumice soil of my farm it washed out the dirt above it and created this hole. I had to scoop out the water to get to the bottom of it.
The hole is about 18 inches across and three feet deep. The pipe came loose from the green fitting with the round hole visible near the center of the pool of water in the bottom.
This part failed. Or perhaps the installation wasn't quite right. Something went wrong:
Dealing with it down a hole at arms length wasn't easy, but we got it fixed. Then, an hour later, a part just like it, but above ground, failed in the same way. Another blowout, but this time with water spraying above ground.
So I am going back out to the farm to try to deal with this now. I will conclude with the point of view of a farmer. Appreciate the food you buy. Food is hard to make.
Sometimes the quotidian details are soothing, even if fixing those daily problems is not. Thanks for this, Peter.