Irrigation

The unusually warm weather seems to have gotten me in the mood to talk about the irrigation methods used on the farm. We have 3 different methods we use for getting water to plants at all stages of growth. The plants start small in one of 4 greenhouses which are irrigated out of a well. They are pumped through a series of pipes that are connected to emitters which, depending on the greenhouse, either deliver a mist or a rain like pattern. This system is connected to a fertilizer injector called a "Dosatron" which can deliver liquid fertilizer or other chemicals through the greenhouses.

Once the plants make it to the field, they are then watered using a technique called drip irrigation. This consists of about 5 miles of soft plastic tubing with slits that emit an exact dosage of water. These small black lines are buried underground to prevent water loss from evaporation. This is then all connected through a series of "lay-flat" hoses which run down to a small pond. It is the pumped out at around 150 gpm through dual sand filters, before reaching the plants.

Watering the apple trees for me is the coolest process. We use a very large machine called a traveler. A traveler is a reel with about 1500 feet of hard plastic hose wound around it; on the end of the hose there is a gun cart. The gun cart houses a large sprinkler which can handle huge volumes of water, throwing it in a circle with a 150 foot radius. This piece of equipment requires  6" diameter pipe to provide it the volume of water it needs.  The water for this machine is fed out of a large creek on the farm. It is sucked out at about 400 gallons per minute with a 115 horsepower turbocharged John Deere power unit attached to a Cornell pump. When it leaves the pump it is at almost 200 psi. A pump this size at 0 psi can handle 1200 gpm easily. This pump is primed using an engine in a truck, a hose is attached to the engine which creates a vacuum, sucking water into the pumping unit. As the water runs through the traveler, it turns a turbine which provides power to a gearbox, which slowly reels in the gun cart.

A traveller