End of First Summer 2015

The close of the first summer since we purchased the property is only a week away. This first year of starting the orchard also turned out to be the first drought since 2005, and the biggest one in decades due to record low mountain snowpack. As a result, irrigation water through Agnew Irrigation District was shut off on August 13th instead of mid-September. The trees did okay, but we once hauled water down to irrigate the artichokes. Chris finished up phase I of the French Drain by laying the perf pipe into the ditch atop the first layer of drain rock, then covering the piping with more drainage rock as shown in the first photo below. Then she removed the wood stakes from fabric cloth and did a burrito roll by folding over the edges of the cloth to cover the rock. Finally, she leveled the hills of dirt over top of the fabric cloth. The second photo shows the land after only about 2 weeks of intermittent rain above where the French Drain was covered over--all that visibly remains from a distance now is the brown horizontal line.