irrigation systems and deer....
On Sunday, Dad and I built a gravity-fed irrigation system for the tomato patch. It consists of a 500 gallon stock tank on a trailer that is set up on the hill about 15-20 ft above the garden patch. The spring creek runs between the tank and the garden, so we dug a hole in the spring creek and placed a washtub with small drilled holes around it into the hole we dug. This is to keep from sucking up silt and rocks with the large trash pump that I have. You turn on the pump and it fills the 500 gallon tank up the hill in about 8 minutes. It PUSHES a large volume of water! What's crazy is it doesn't lower the spring or even the water level in the hole we dug at all, that's how much water flow we have in the spring, even in the dead middle of summer! From the tank we created a garden hose fitting and put it into the drain hole for the tank. This pushes water down the hill and back across the spring through 250 feet of garden hose. I can probably store enough water to irrigate for 3 hours every day for a week before I have to refill the tank. It awesome to be able to water the garden with a garden hose now. It pushes about 10-15 psi out of the end of the hose even with that much length attached....its pretty amazing. No more watering with large containers and buckets...that was too time consuming and labor intensive!
So after we got this all installed yesterday, and I had soaked the tomato patch down really well, I had the most magickal encounter with a deer yet to date.
I was walking back down the road towards the barn from the tomato patch about 8pm, when I saw a deer down by the spring crossing feeding next to the sycamore tree. As I got closer, I realized it was the young buck that I had an encounter with a few weeks ago over by the orchard. I got about 50 yards away and he stopped feeding and looked at me. As I approached, I started talking to him, and he turned and started walking towards me! We approached each other, and got about 20 yards away before we both stopped. I continued to talk to him, and he showed absolutely no fear of me. I started noticing that song-birds were landing around us and hanging out much closer than they usually do when you're outside. At this point, a small song bird landed on his back as we had our "conversation". He never spoke actual words, but his facial expressions relayed that he was understanding some of what I said to him. I did ask him to keep himself and his brothers out of the tomato patch, as I had left them 7 acres of clover to feed on, and I would leave them alone in peace if they did. He then bowed after I said this. Then another songbird landed on his velvet antler. I mentioned that he was looking healthier than the last time I saw him, and he was putting more meat on his bones, and well as the fact that his antlers had grown some more. He started sniffing at me, and I was watching his ears turn and swivel, picking up the words as I spoke. After a few minutes of us just standing and looking at each other, he slowly started to feed again just a few feet away from me. I bid him farewell, and said I was going on my own way now. We both started to wander away from each other, me heading towards the bridge crossing the spring, and him slowly down the pasture, looking for more tasty things to feed on. Not once did he show great alarm, and showed more curiosity than even last time I saw him.
It sounds like I'm making this up, or even like its something out of a Disney movie, but it really did happen! He's been coming across grandma's yard for over a month now, and feeding back across the same general path most evenings, sometimes as early as mid-afternoon. Last time we saw him, he was in the orchard in grandma's yard as I pulled up in the car. Dad was in the driveway, and he displayed the same type of curiosity, even walking towards Dad, Amanda and I as we talked to him. But this time was even more magickal. I'm not sure what it means, but it was freaking cool!
So after we got this all installed yesterday, and I had soaked the tomato patch down really well, I had the most magickal encounter with a deer yet to date.
I was walking back down the road towards the barn from the tomato patch about 8pm, when I saw a deer down by the spring crossing feeding next to the sycamore tree. As I got closer, I realized it was the young buck that I had an encounter with a few weeks ago over by the orchard. I got about 50 yards away and he stopped feeding and looked at me. As I approached, I started talking to him, and he turned and started walking towards me! We approached each other, and got about 20 yards away before we both stopped. I continued to talk to him, and he showed absolutely no fear of me. I started noticing that song-birds were landing around us and hanging out much closer than they usually do when you're outside. At this point, a small song bird landed on his back as we had our "conversation". He never spoke actual words, but his facial expressions relayed that he was understanding some of what I said to him. I did ask him to keep himself and his brothers out of the tomato patch, as I had left them 7 acres of clover to feed on, and I would leave them alone in peace if they did. He then bowed after I said this. Then another songbird landed on his velvet antler. I mentioned that he was looking healthier than the last time I saw him, and he was putting more meat on his bones, and well as the fact that his antlers had grown some more. He started sniffing at me, and I was watching his ears turn and swivel, picking up the words as I spoke. After a few minutes of us just standing and looking at each other, he slowly started to feed again just a few feet away from me. I bid him farewell, and said I was going on my own way now. We both started to wander away from each other, me heading towards the bridge crossing the spring, and him slowly down the pasture, looking for more tasty things to feed on. Not once did he show great alarm, and showed more curiosity than even last time I saw him.
It sounds like I'm making this up, or even like its something out of a Disney movie, but it really did happen! He's been coming across grandma's yard for over a month now, and feeding back across the same general path most evenings, sometimes as early as mid-afternoon. Last time we saw him, he was in the orchard in grandma's yard as I pulled up in the car. Dad was in the driveway, and he displayed the same type of curiosity, even walking towards Dad, Amanda and I as we talked to him. But this time was even more magickal. I'm not sure what it means, but it was freaking cool!