Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.
Water is life, and never is this more true for me than in July and August as the native soil moisture drops and dust blows in the wind. The landscape is parched and brown but for the oases of green where water flows or is directed. Up here on the ridge there are no more flowing creeks, nothing remains of the surface water except small seeps at sheltered springs and the stored water of ag ponds.
We’re pumping hard from the pond to keep up with the demands of the gardens, the water pipes acting as the thin blue line between life and slow, wilted death. I clean the filters on each timer once a week, though I realized that some of the higher volume timers need it more often, evidenced by wilting squash at the far end of the beds where water arrives last. The pond level is dropping, but we’re checking the days off the calendar with our fingers crossed that there will be enough.
The new pumps have given us enough capacity to water all of the crops sufficiently for the first time in our lives as farmers, and it feels surreal not to have the deep stress of deciding which crops go thirsty on any given day. The extra water means that we’re able to produce more food than ever before and to give the big full-term cannabis plants enough to keep them growing happily in the July heat.
We had to make some adjustments to the new pumps this week because of the lower level of the pond. The floating dock is anchored in the middle, but when the water level drops it means that the anchor rope has more play, which allows the dock to drift in towards the shore. The new pumps were installed under floating rafts made of 3” PVC, anchored on the shoreward side of the dock. With the combined inward drift from the lower water level, extra anchor rope and the placement of the pumps, there was only a few feet of water below them.
Ten years or so ago we learned a devastating lesson about what happens if you let the submersible Grunfos pump drop into the mud, sucking grit into the pumping mechanism and ruining the machine. Wary of such consequences, I endeavored to build a PVC frame to go underneath the floating rafts so that even if the water level dropped to a point where the pumps would touch the mud, the frame would keep the pump suspended above the muck.
We save all sorts of old parts and equipment for reuse and repurposing whenever possible because money is tight, and we want to make the best use of our resources. I went to the scrap piles for pieces of 1 ¼” old greenhouse PVC, along with a bucket of T’s that we had purchased for making tomato trellises by setting them on top of T-posts and running EMT conduit through them to provide a high bar to tie the tomatoes up to. Given these existing parts, I only needed to buy a few PVC 90s and some glue to make the frames on the farm.
My first attempt involved some faulty thinking, and I found myself out on the pond in a kayak trying desperately to maneuver the frame underneath the floating pump raft while struggling to avoid capsizing. It was incredibly difficult physical labor that in retrospect made little sense to attempt. After fighting with it for an hour I realized that I should just pull the pumps into dry land and make the frames there, at which point I felt dumb for how hard I had been working.
After pulling the pumps and constructing a square frame with four legs, I slid them back out into the pond, but on the way out I popped one of the legs out of its fitting when it got caught in the mud. At this point it was drawing down towards dusk, and I had to accept defeat and plan to regroup for an attempt another day. I also came to the realization that I would need to extend the electrical wiring and mainline enough to move the pumps out to deep water on the other side of the dock. Feeling demoralized, I called it for the night.
A few days later my buddy was down to help, and I had bought the PVC 90s and more glue, so we made a second foray. We pulled the pumps in, and I built the frames while he extended the wiring on the one pump that didn’t have enough extra cable. With rectangular, three-dimensional frames completed and mounted beneath the floating three-inch PVC, the rafts slid out easily instead of sticking in the mud, giving me much more confidence in the design and capability to keep the pumps out of the muck. We extended the PVC mainline and got the pump rafts attached to the anchor rope in water deep enough that I couldn’t touch the bottom when I reached down as far as I could with the kayak paddle. We then had a confusing interlude in which one of the pump charge controllers wouldn’t work (because the sun was too far off the panels to provide enough power), but the next morning it fired up just fine.
All in all, I’m glad to have the peace of mind of pumps floating over frameworks so that when the pond gets low later in the fall we’ll be in a good position to manage that process. I’m slowly learning the adage that “if you can’t find the time to do it right, you’ll find the time to do it twice.” As summer moves along, the farm is looking good, and we are grateful. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!
Casey O’Neill owns and runs HappyDay Farms, a small vegetable and cannabis farm north of Laytonville. He is a long time cannabis policy advocate, and was born and raised in the Bell Springs area. The preceding has been an editorial column. The Mendocino Voice has not necessarily fact-checked or copyedited this work, and it should be interpreted as the words of the author, not necessarily reflecting the opinions of The Mendocino Voice.