Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 30 March 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good morning and happy Thursday from Air2Ground Farms! The farm is in a bit of crisis at the moment--not to worry, we left the Guineas in charge! More on the waterer below, but bottom line is that the leak at the waterer was not our water issue. We got the leak stopped and there still was not enough pressure on the system to get water up to where the cows are. It eventually filled their waterer yesterday evening but by morning, it was low again and not filling quickly enough. We had already decided to call in the experts and did so first thing this morning. As I type in the truck on the way to pick up our pork, the well/pump serviceman is pulling the pump. His initial diagnosis is that it may not be the pump but a hole in the pipe leaving the pump, due to water in a place it shouldn’t be when he removed the check valve. We certainly hope to buy a 20’ section of 1” galvanized pipe instead of a new pump. Update tomorrow on the resolution. Until fixed, the animals are a bit low on water. If he is unable to get it working today, we will have to do a couple of unscheduled animal moves to ensure they can get to water by evening. We moved the last of the beef chickens into the main brooder this morning. What a relief! The other animals are all doing well. Yesterday, we spent the day working on the waterer, details below. Today, we are going to pick up the pork from the processor while the pump/pipe/whatever is being fixed and will put the waterer back together this afternoon.
We picked up the backhoe a little after noon and drove it across the road, down the driveway, and across the creek to the waterer that needed a valve replaced. This particular valve was a bit deeper than the last one we replaced. About 4 feet down instead of 3. I carefully coaxed the hoe into the rocky soil, easing my way ever closer to the underground pipe. The last time we worked on one, we had the best hoe operator around digging the hole and he accidentally snagged the poly pipe and ripped it out of the bottom of the waterer. Not the end of the world, but added more PVC repair and a couple of hours to the job. With this knowledge, I was being extra careful…right up until I snagged the poly pipe and ripped it out of the bottom of the waterer. Unbeknownst to me, the poly pipe sloped upward after it left the gate valve that needed to be replaced. Since I was using the valve to know how deep to dig, the pipe sloping upward caused me to snag it before reaching the depth I was trying to reach. Awesome. That added a 45 minute trip to the store that has those fittings instead of just the 25 minute trip to get a new gate valve. The bottom pic shows the poly-to-PVC fitting I needed. I rushed to the different stores and was able to get the fittings I needed before everyone closed at 5:00pm sharp. As we were putting things back together, with the new valve, we realized that the pipe leaving the old valve was 3/4” and not 1” like we assumed. We have quite a bit of spare PVC fittings around for just these occasions, but not a 1” to 3/4” reducer that we needed. So, we called it quits for the evening and will buy the needed fitting today on our way back from the processor. Hopefully we will have the entire thing put back together and the hole filled in before the rain and thunderstorms hit around 7:00pm this evening!
Shelley posted a YouTube Short yesterday that has only gotten 23 views. It is a cute first-person clip of letting Stella out of her loafing pen. What do you think about it?
Local Farm Report for 29 March 2023:
32 Chicken eggs
10 Duck eggs
1 Goose egg
5 Gallons of milk
Sales:
N/A
Cheers! Psycho & Shelley
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