Importance of water In Agriculture.
Water is very important in agriculture. Never take it for granted. When we started our farm, we went on to check out the creek with some neighbors, and were told that it never dries up. This creek runs across our farm diagonally. We also did a pipe-in water from the hills quite a distant away with a 50 mm hdpe pipe. Things were running well up till end July. We had converted 1 acres (out of 4) to plant vegetables that requires lots of water daily. While expanding the 1 acre, the dry spell came and it did not rained for a period of 3 weeks. The small creek start to dry up. We estimated the volume of input from the creek is not sufficient for our use. Our first option is to use our pipe-in water. As it was from quite a far distance, and incidentally there were some road works and water pipe laying works being carried out at the same time. These cause plenty of disruption on the pipe-in water supply. It was unreliable. We had up to 6 days without pipe-in water. This cause quite a numbers of seedlings to died off. Those that survive are stunt, and have difficulty of recovering. Our second option was to save whatever possible and we use our water sparingly. We then engaged a tractor to dig three wells along the creek and one well on our neighbor's land. Luckily we strike underground water at our neighbor's land. It was fine for a while. We also used the pipe-in water to fill up the well at the creek. Unfortunately, part of the cliff eroded and block off the underground water inlet. Water level was recovering too slowly for our usage (as we have extended till 2 acres of vegetable). We then reverted to the wells at the creek. We have sufficient water for the moment, but we are only planting 2 out of 4 acres of our farm. Our option now is to plant plants that requires less water. We have 4 wells to rotate so we feel that we should be good for a stretch of three weeks of no / intermittent rain. We then proceed to plant out our remaining land. Things turned out well for us, as the rain came on the evening of 11th September. It's raining daily mostly in the late evening or night. We are so grateful to the weather and the weather forecast people. A big Thank You.
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Water is very important in agriculture. Never take it for granted. When we started our farm, we went on to check out the creek with some neighbors, and were told that it never dries up. This creek runs across our farm diagonally. We also did a pipe-in water from the hills quite a distant away with a 50 mm hdpe pipe. Things were running well up till end July. We had converted 1 acres (out of 4) to plant vegetables that requires lots of water daily. While expanding the 1 acre, the dry spell came and it did not rained for a period of 3 weeks. The small creek start to dry up. We estimated the volume of input from the creek is not sufficient for our use. Our first option is to use our pipe-in water. As it was from quite a far distance, and incidentally there were some road works and water pipe laying works being carried out at the same time. These cause plenty of disruption on the pipe-in water supply. It was unreliable. We had up to 6 days without pipe-in water. This cause quite a numbers of seedlings to died off. Those that survive are stunt, and have difficulty of recovering. Our second option was to save whatever possible and we use our water sparingly. We then engaged a tractor to dig three wells along the creek and one well on our neighbor's land. Luckily we strike underground water at our neighbor's land. It was fine for a while. We also used the pipe-in water to fill up the well at the creek. Unfortunately, part of the cliff eroded and block off the underground water inlet. Water level was recovering too slowly for our usage (as we have extended till 2 acres of vegetable). We then reverted to the wells at the creek. We have sufficient water for the moment, but we are only planting 2 out of 4 acres of our farm. Our option now is to plant plants that requires less water. We have 4 wells to rotate so we feel that we should be good for a stretch of three weeks of no / intermittent rain. We then proceed to plant out our remaining land. Things turned out well for us, as the rain came on the evening of 11th September. It's raining daily mostly in the late evening or night. We are so grateful to the weather and the weather forecast people. A big Thank You.