Land optimization

With land prices increasing and resources becoming even more scarce it is getting harder and harder for the farmer to expand their business. Farmers are looking for other ways to maximize the amount of farmable acres in our fields. We thought of an opportunity on the last field we purchased. They previously farmed hay on the property and flood irrigated their crops. When we planted almond trees we installed a drip irrigation system. Drip irrigation is a more efficient way to irrigate trees, and when there is such little irrigation water we always turn to efficiency.

Four years later, we still had this tail pit on a corner of the field from the flood irrigation system that we weren't using anymore. We have a large reservoir we use on the other side of the field and no need for a small pit as well. 

Filling in the tail pit

Crane lifting out parts of the flood irrigation system

To make the area usable we needed to remove the infrastructure from the flood irrigation system. We removed the electrical service, the pump and the cement structures used to operate the system. This was the more labor intensive project, we brought in a crane to lift the cement chunks and pump parts out. Slowly, when there was extra dirt around from odd projects on the farm we would take the dirt to the tail pit to fill it in. Once we filled in the pit we leveled the soil, made tree mounds, planted young trees and extended the irrigation hose.  Now we have 40 additional trees in the orchard and optimized our land usage!

Land optimization!

 Until Next Time,

Almond Girl